VIA’s “Bras d’Or” meaning “gold arm” in French.
People nicknamed Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo (TH&B) trains “To Hell and Back”
One of the more curious sounding names that comes to mind is the Ak-Sar-Ben Zephyr (CB&Q).
Local Freights amongst the various railroads sometimes had strange names
Peanut Run - Akron to Warwick and return
Dirty Shirt - Willard to Garrett and Cumberland to Brunswick
Black Cat - Glenwood to Pittsbugh
Dive Bomber - Baltimore Terminal tranfer run
Naked Lady - Centrailia to Chicago
Ping Pong - Salt Lake City - Sugar House, UT
Rabbit Run - Flora, IL to Shattuc, IL
Sally - Glenwood, PA to Demmler, PA
Some were names the companies gave the runs, some were names the crews gave the runs…some of the runs and their names exist to this day.
Don’t say that too loud around a Husker! Ak-Sar-Ben is the name of a very famous Nebraska/Omaha civic booster group that goes back a number of generations. Big deal in Omaha. Spells “Nebraska” backwards.
SP had a secondary train called the Beaver.Their mail train was nicknamed Sad Sam.
GN had the Badger. The RR always took great pains to keep it deodorized and so it always smelled good inside cause we don’t need no stinking Badgers… [}:)][}:)][}:)][}:)][}:)][:-,][tdn][tdn][:-^]
GN also had the Gopher.
Here’s some more:
IC’s Irvin S. Cobb, PA’s Nellie Bly, NH’s Gilt Edge, C&EI’s Zipper.
I also recall the Furlough and the Nightcap but don’t remember the railroads (NH or PA?).
Milwaukee Road’s Olympian Hiawatha
NJ Transit still uses that name for it’s Monmouth Park
…PennsylvaniaRailroad: That’s a neat “logo” at your signiture.
How about sports names for trains? There were, of course, numerous Chiefs, The 49er, numerous Flyers, a fleet of Eagles, The Steeler, The Viking, The Senator,The Laker, The (Yankee) Clipper, The Padre, a fleet of Rockets, The Varsity, I’m sure there are many more.
Attn: HUGH JAMPTON Re: Newfie Bullet
This is jst an aside re Newfie Bullet
Before Joey Smallwood became premier of Newfoundland, he was a union organizer
He walked all 547 miles of the railroad visition all stations and shops to organize
a RR union & was successful of course.
He owned quite a large pig farm and when he became premier, and any visiting dignataries came to visit, whether they were presidents, kings, princes, premiers etc. He would always take delight in showing off his pig farm.
You can add the above to your book of useless information.
This is my kind of topic!
I’ve been researching and collecting passenger train names since high school and I’ve found a number of them which were more creative or unique than the usual “Chicago Express” type names. The majority of names I have come across make sense because of the context in which the passenger run operated, but some names stand out. Examples:
“11 Come 7” - A Colorado Midland Denver-Cripple Creek run.
Airliner - A NYC Toledo-Chicago run which celebrated a more direct line between those two cities than acknowledge another form of transportation.
Big Five (RI), Chicago 23/Cincinnati 24 (PRR). Katy “Eight” (MKT), Santa Fe Eight (ATSF) - for a time railroads would utilize the train number as part of the run name.
Coast to Coast Limited - No, this was not applied to a true transcontinental train. This was used by the Seaboard for a Tampa-West Palm Beach run.
Cuban Special - This Chicago/St. Louis - New Orleans Illinois Central train existed briefly around 1906 to counter the Havana Limited, an also short lived Alton/Mobile & Ohio Chicago-Mobile train.
Dixieana - C&EI/L&N/NC&StL/ACL/FEC - Chicago-Miami - Ran only 6 trips before it was canceled because of WWII.
Excelsior Express - Erie/Big 4 - New York-St. Louis.
Hook and Eye Local - L&N - Atlanta-Knoxville.
Industrial - South Shore - Chicago-South Bend.
Legislative Limited - Big 4 - Cincinnati-Columbus.
Grand Central - NYC - New York-Chicago - What other railroad sported a train named after a station?
Mudlavia and Brazil Express - C&EI - Chicago-Terre Haute and Caribbean Mail - FEC -
Jacksonville - Miami - Two exotic sounding runs.
Newsboy - SP Oakland-Sacramento.
Pleasure Limited - Galveston-Houston Electric - Galveston-Houston.
Progress Limited - PRR - Pittsburgh-Chicago - An ironic name used in the midst of the Depression in trying t
Yep, indeed, when this train was westbound from Chicago to Omaha it was called the NEBRASKA Zephyr, then eastbound from Omaha to Chicago it was called (you guessed it) the AKSARBEN Zephyr…catchy heh?
AKSARBEN backwards is ?
In contemprary times, and while not a passenger train, I kinda like the BNSF daily train from Chicago (Belt Railway of Chicago yard) to Galesburg…symbol freight BRCGAL…which is known to local BNSF workers and to the dispatchers as simply the “Brickgal” and that’s how they call them on the radio…really.
Bob, AKSARBEN backwards is NEBRASKA
Acela Express! It took me forever to figure out how to say Acela before I found that it was a combination of “acceleration” and “excellence,” according to Amtrak anyway. It was rather obvious after that.
At one time, an eastern railroad,(I think NYC) had a piggyback train called the Flying Saucer.