My financial district building has these businesses:
Baylout Investment Bank
Tepartie Insurance
Behr’s Market (the stripes on the front canopy are black and blue)
I’m also currently working on my Acme Industries building. The loading dock will include an odd assortment of items, including crates of TNT and some small rockets.
On his last layout, LION named business after monks in the monastery:
Roman Arms Apartments (after Fr. Roman)
Ben’s Tobacco (after Fr. Benedict, who smoked like a chimney)
Robert’s Wild West Wines ( after Fr. Robert West who started us in the wine business)
Gross Grain (after Br. Placid Gross, our farm boss)
Seebergers Fast Fish Restaurant (after Fr. Claude Seeberger, or avid fisherman)
And then there was the bakery: The Miracle Baking Company—If it’s fresh its a Miracle!"
There were no zoos on that layout. 
ROAR
Don’t forget that shipment of anvils!
For the Bank here are few real World samples.
JP Morgan
HSBC
(Truth is stranger than fiction) [B)]
Cheers!
And then,
Lee Key Shipyard,
IF IT’ A GOOD CHAIR,IT’S A MIRACLE…
Cheers,
Frank
Clean Sweep Broom Company
I’m glad I’m not the only idiot in this hobby…or pervert! I have used many ridiculous names just to see reactions from visiotors…
U.B. Poupin Laxitive Company
I.P.Fine Urologist
Dr. Seymore Beaver Gynocologist
Dr. I.C. Pyles Protologist
What’s in the Trap… West Virginia restaurant chain offering road kill du jour or anything dead served on bread
Phil McCraken Cement Co.
It gets worse (or better).
HZ
Hugh Jass - Plus-size apparel
Hadley Newham - Funeral Director (Boston)
Candace B. Rittenoff - ccountant
Max Stout - Credit Counselor
Justin Volk V - Defense Attorney
Gil T. Azell - Prosecutor
Carmine Nottyors - Divorce Lawyer
Illgott & Gaines - Financial Advisors
Cameron Diaz - Gastroenterologist
Winston Paine - Dentist
So far, I see a lot of funny ideas. Great stuff, everybody!
The trucking company is named “Fiasco Transport” and it’s slogan is “Surprising Results”. The blue tow truck is owned by “Heel Towing”.
The bread baker is named “Stayle Bread Company”.
S Creek Paddle Co. (Guess on the 4 letter “s” word, can’t put that word or symbols for it)
Lennon & McCartney Rubber Soles. Saw that one at a local club layout years ago.
Justin Tyme Clocks
Dr. Ben Dover Proctologist
Dr. Frank N. Stein
Daisy Paper Products “Home of Thumbs Up[Y] Toilet Paper - A Breakthrough in Personal Hygiene!”
Gondolas with scrap metal move in westbound through trains on my railroad from a scrap dealer named REESE EICKLE in the unmodeled city of Lost River on the east end of the land. The scrap yard of course is not modeled. But the name appears on the waybills.
Boxcars and refrigerators cars with food products move in eastbound through trains going to a wholesale grocery warehouse at Lost River. The company has a chain of a stores in small towns in the low-lying delta country on the Texas-Louisiana border that appeals to low-income customers with groceries on credit. The name of the chain is BUY-OWE GROCERIES.
Pulpwood rack cars are picked up by local peddler freights in my modeled town of Johnston, bound east for a paper mill on the Louisiana border. The paper mill is the result of a business arrangement between an old Cajun family with one of those French names, and the Conde Nast Publishing Company. (Similar to the way Time Life has an interest in a paper mill at Evadale just on the Texas side of the border.) The mill (unmodeled) that receives the pulpwood is QUEAUX - NAST PAPER CO. You have to say it out loud to get it. But be careful where you say it out loud. Some Cajuns may mistake that corporate name for a colorful colloquialism which some will take affectionately, but at which others might take umbrage.
There is a sign on Interstate 10 about 15 miles east of Houston where the highway crosses from old channels that used to be part of the San Jacinto River at some time in the geologic past. The sign for the eastbound lanes says “Old and Lost Rivers” and westbound “Lost and Old Rivers”. In other words, one river name comes on one side of the other but they are so confused, they are not sure where one starts and the other stops. I thought
Centerpiece of the Johnston small town scene on my East Texas layout is the WAYNE COUNTY COURTHOUSE on the courthouse square. Most counties in Texas are named for famous Texas heroes: early settlers or soliders in the Texas Revolution. For my ficticious Texas county, I figured I needed a ficticious Texas hero. It’s named for John Wayne. Town of Johnston is named in memory of a model railroader friend who died 30 years ago.
Dixie Darlin receives boxcars of bagged peanuts from SCHULTZ PEANUTS (named for the late creator of Charlie Brown and Snoopy) Norton,TX (once built a small layout for the Norton Brothers) and NEW ACES FARMS (the English pronunciation of “Nueces”, Spanish for nuts) Truesdale TX. Though Texas nuts are the main base, Dixie Darlin occasionally gets a shipment of Georgia peanuts for subtle taste blending. Those shipments come from KENNEDY-BUTLER ENTERPRISES (named for two of the three husbands of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind”) Tara, GA.
One of the model railroaders in Corpus Christi is a rock-n-roll disc jockey in real life (if you can call that real life) with the “air name” J.J.STONE. Of course, when I built a gravel pit, I had to give his name to the operation.
Not exactly a pun but… the Methodist church in Johnston has a half-inch tall sign in front with the week’s sermon topic
I wrote about the names of places on the portions of railroad I have already modeled. I have a number of scenes planned, in some cases kits bought, for the big city of Santa Vaca IF I ever get the space to build it. In the meanwhile, I run cars that are supposedly coming from Santa Vaca over the portion of railroad I already have.
I want a coffee plant like the Maxwell House plant I gew up near in Houston, right near the old Houston Belt and Terminal Milby Street engine terminal. The building is fascinating for having an old portion, a newer add-on in a modernized but stylized version of the old architecture, and then a still newer add-on, built to harmonize. The oldest part of the building was an automobile assembly plant in the 1920s according to Ray Miller’s Texas, and it looks very similar to Walther’s “Brach’s Candy Factory”. Now for the name. The name of A&P Grocery Stores came from The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, and there was also an Atlantic and Pacific Railroad that became part of the Santa Fe. So why not the name or initials of a railroad as the name of a coffee company. The Santa Fe in Texas was the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe. I thought of Gulf and Colorado Coffee, but Colorado is not a name one associates with coffee. Gulf and Caribbean fits a little better. Abbreviated G&C, with the slogan “G&C is Good Coffee!”
A steel fabrication yard that builds refinery vessels so big they take two heavy-duty flatcars to ship: TOTAL FABRICATION.
A chemical plant that ships smelly stuff in tankcars: EUREKA CHEMICALS
A siding where cars are left to interchange with the industrial railroad serving the port but it is actually only
How about these:
Rob E. Blind National Bank
Smokey’s Gas (with a sign in the window that says “Fill your tank and get a surprise trip to Bermuda”)
I. C. D. Pink Elephant Bar (or I. C. A.)
Silver Spoon Diner (which of course looks like the typical “greasy spoon.”)
Those are some that I came up with, but you could find more looking through a Walthers yearly catalog.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. An elderly Reverend in my town growing up named Reverned Cash had a daughter…you guessed it… she was named Penny.
Penny Cash Savings Bank
Barium Funeral Home, Mr. Don Belough, Director.{spoken as “Down Below”} {one possible motto: You stab em, we slab em.}
Downe & Uppe, Elevator manufacturers {who needs Otis?}
A. Round Towne Diner
Passin Gas CO., Propane distributors
Woodpecker Lumber CO.
That’s all I can remember now.
I never exactly subscribed to using the pun funny names for MRRing, although I did come up with some ditties…just can’t think of them now after reading all the others {which are often of course common twists on names and phrases, and therefore easy to come up with}. {confused my brain now…easy to do these years [:-^]} …
My favorite book title, though, is: Five Miles to the Outhouse, by Willy Makit.
real one, located along old US 40 in central MO
Atlasta Motel
Cool Thread, hope this keeps going On-N-Non…
I’ve heard of that book! Illustrated by Betty Wont ![:O]
Rolling down the Road Brake Repairs