[:P]
Soooo you’re against tall valets? Good on you for supporting people of short stature, but hieght discrimination? Shame on you. Tall people of the world unite! No more getting things off of the top shelf for you!
Yes this post has it’s tongue firmly in it’s cheek.
Although my HO railroad simply covers the New York Central circa 1955-1965, I recently retired and decided to get into G scale in the backyard. 40 years of work in healthcare had taken their toll so I came up with a name for my G scale railroad of Knackered Valley Railroad. The herald is an old mule with a pronounced swayback. I am of British heritage (mother born and raised in South London) so the knackered name came easily to me. Those site members in the UK need no explanation. Others may google the word (no, it’s not rude).
thanks for pointing that out.
The new forum software is challenging.
I think the really silly / funny names are pretty rare now, but were common in the early days of the hobby. I haven’t seen a “Basement and Furnace Falls” or “Lilliput and Attic” layout name for quite a while.
Also, in recent years, more people model real railroads, and specific parts of railroads. In 1980 someone might say they have a “New York Central” layout, representing a fictional NYC branchline running generic NYC trains. Today, they might say they model “New York Central - Mohawk Division” with scenery, towns, trains etc. specific to that part of the railroad.
I remember these funny names from the 60s.
Thin Dime Line-Herald was a dime.
Flat Broke & Still Running.
Huffing & Puffing Railroad.
Crooked Creek & Bandit City-“Route of the Owl Hoots”.
Even today’s freelance railroad modelers follows prototype practices and uses prototypical sounding railroad names lettered with custom made decals.
My railroad name is based on a “what if”. What if the Old and Weary, NYO&W, had put down tracks to the west of where they did and shipped coal to Canada from a community near Rochester, NY intead of going near Syracuse and up to Oswego. I had it running up where the LV ran on the shores of Seneca Lake and so call it the "Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Westren RR. That makes the call letters SLOW. Our motto is appropriately “We’ll get there sooner or later”.
73
Mine is the Austinville and Dynamite City.
The Austinville & Dynamite City Railroad is a rich one. It orginally started as a branchline of the mighty Pennsylvania railroad (PRR) in their southern expansion from Pittsburgh PA. The original Branch stretched between Pittsburgh and Washington Pa, and looped through the Mon Valley. It served the city of Austinville, and it eventually became the hub of a major railyard called Austin. But the PRR Austin branch was not the first railroad in the area, with several other logging lines starting up including the Austinville and Southern, the Danerville, and The Belle Vernon and Fort Wayne. The Shortlines eventually collapsed during the Great Depression, and their equipment was picked up by the PRR, but never relettered-most was stored in either the Pittsburgh or the Austin yard. While World War 2 benefited the PRR greatly, the Austin branch suffered greatly and was filed for abandonment. At the last minute though, the CIties of Austinville and Dynamite City purchased the branch, and created the AVDC in 1952.
Eventually the PRR, NYC, Reading, Western Maryland,etc were merged into the disastrous Penn Central, and created a hub in Belle Vernon Pa. The Penn Central showed no interest in purchasing it and was recorded as saying “We don’t want that little pike disaster”. When Penn Central filed for bankruptcy in 1968, it appeared that the entire railroad industry would collapse and destroy the entire southwestern PA/Eastern Ohio/Nothern WV area. Conrail was formed at the last minute, and once again wasn’t interested in the Austinville and Dynamite City branch. In fact everything started to collapse rail wise. Conrail abandoned the Pittsburgh to Belle Vernon line, and built a new branch between Pittsburgh and Monesseon Pa, isolating the AVDC until the “Mon Valley” branch was purchased and rebuilt, thus giving the coal of Dynamite city (Among o
Fact is stranger than fiction.
I would not be surprised if this actually did happen in the real world somewhere.
oops, never mind.
An odd thing, but most people assume when I talk about my free-lance St.Paul Duluth & Canadian Ry. (“The St.Paul Route”) that it was/is a real railroad; but when I talk about the real railroad that ran across the street from my house years ago, the Minneapolis Northfield & Southern, people generally think I’m making that up…something about having both “north” and “south” in the name apparently.
[:S]
p.s. I wonder what they’d think of the MN&S railroad’s original name, the Minneapolis St.Paul Rochester & Dubuque Electric Traction Company??
Sure it does Rich. “The Chicago Dearborn Railroad”
Truth be told, it is the Chicago Central Terminal.
Model names were quite popular in the 50’s and 60’s. Even John Allen’s ‘Gorre & Daphetid’ was sort of tongue in cheek. I remember a guy in the Twin Cities who had the ‘Thin Dime Lines’. I think many folks now just model a specific prototype, or the lack of decal lettering has limited ‘private’ road names.
Jim
Jim,Highball Graphics will make decals for freelance railroads by request.
Examples:
Well that sounds even better, I like it.
Not only modelers come up with funny names: Walking Horse & Eastern
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=walking+horse+and+eastern+railroad&qpvt=walking
Have no idea if it still runs, but the track is still in place.
I kept the name simple, “Columbia Northern” referring back to Cuyama’s advice some time ago on a slogan, I’ve decided on “Roll on Columbia.”
If I were to get silly I’d borrow the Moniker used by fellow SP&S N scaler John Moore “The Spit, Pop, and Sputtering Railway.”
WHOE is still running as of 7 months ago…It uses a GP38 for power…Its just over 7 miles long…
Railroda of LION were:
The Eastern South-west North Dakota Central Railroad. (Serving the Middle of Nowhere.)
The Eregion Railroad. A well developed theam based on Tolkein’s Middle Earth. Modeled was a line between Fornost and Bree, with staging areas to represent points south, East and West.
and
(Ramu is a Strawberry or Golden tiger, having orange and brown stripes, but no black stripes. We like to say Strawberry Felids Forever.)
ROAR