I am build my layout and it is loosely based on rural OH and the Buffalo, NY regions, and I need a basic name for a town. The town has an auto plant as its main industry. I would love to here your names, but nothing silly please.
For me and because it is fictional and free lance I choose the area, in my case Colorado and Wyoming and look at the town index of these states in the the rear of the Atlas. This is how I choose the names that I use. Because it is fictional I came up with many to chose from. Doug
Because rivers and lakefronts are usually the flattest route through terrain, a lot of railroads incorporated them in their names. If wildlife was abundant when things were being built, names of animals might also be used. Native American names can tie your fictional railroad to the region you plan to model.
I call my town Moose Bay.
Any given name followed by ville, or a space and City. If on water, even a lake ten miles long could be Port Byrant, etc.
Use your wife"s name with ville.
Dave
You can’t get more generic than Springfield; there is a Springfield in just about every state, if not all.
Why not look at a map near Buffalo, then just pick a village out?
Not hard. Use a river or mountain name from near where your railroad runs. Or use one of these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_common_U.S._place_names
If you look through Google Images at Grain Elevators you will find hundreds of small town names on the side of them. That may give you some ideas.
I am a big Star Trek fan so it is easy for me to pick a small town name to put on the side of my Grain Elevators. Vulcan Alberta is a small town and has lots of Elevators for my steam era.
If the town is located on the shores of Lake Erie then a simple name like Lake View,Lakeside or say Portside or Port Perry(named after Commander Oliver Perry).
How about Alexandria? After that famous Egyption Seaport. A lot of names come from other places. Look at Moscow Idaho. The Russians like the name so much they stole it.[swg]
Consider your area’s Native American heritage.
Conemaugh, as in CR&T (Conemaugh Road & Traction), was the first name of Johnstown, PA – A Native American village first settled by the Shawnee, a division of the Delaware, and a division of the Algonquin Peoples. See Conemaugh at Wikipedia.
Thank you for all the suggestions.[:)]
It’s surprising how many states have a town named “Cuba.”
That actually dates back to the 1890s when The US helped the Cubans revolt against Spain and Cuba was temporarily under US control. Cuba was in the news a lot back then.
You have every right to personalize your layout. Name it after your hometown or the street you grew up on, or your wife’s name, or your mother’s name, or your mother’s hometown, or your high school prom date, or your high school (unles your high school was named after your hometown…)
I have a lot of fictional towns and cities named around 14. I’ll give you an example of how I named towns.
I wanted a lot of trees so I picked Washington, (I believe they have pine trees that’s why I picked it). I wanted to keep the word Pine in the name and next I picked my favorite singer Britney Spears (this was around 10 years ago). So the name came to be called Pine Spears.
I worked for the Central/Penn Central and traveled all over the system. Place names fascinated and frustrated me.
I say frustrated because the Central frequently had named a location and continued to use that name long after locals had adopted some other name. The result was that I could be sent to Podunk and locals never heard of it when I asked directions. This happened a couple of times when I was standing in “Podunk”!
There are lots of examples of this. My hometown was known ONLY to PRR as West Monessen; the rest of the world calls it Lock Four or its official name, North Charleroi.
The point, I guess, is that just about anything goes and it’s your railroad.
Thank you all for the names. I have decided on the fictional name of Ridgeville, just on few minutes outside of Buffalo, NY. I named it Ridgeville because of the (soon-to-be) low-lying ridges on the edges of the layout.
Also, if someone crossed a river or stream & set up a settlement, you get a ‘ford’, as in ‘fording a river’. Hence Brant’s Ford, later Brantford; Battleford; etcetera…and you only need a small hill or cliff to gain the right to ‘Mount’ whatever…
Mine is a ceiling train layout; a natural for an alpine or mountain style, so my main station & town is ‘Minard Pass’, named after the '49er that first found this alternate route to the goldfields…also my surname…
My town of Lemcova pretty much self explains the only industry in town, the Lemcova Lemon Packers Association.
Dave