Did anyone get the nameplay on the Santa Fe station in the October MR? The author V.S. Roseman has named the fictitious station Heloderma N.M., I think it is a wonderful way to make an association with a real place.
I believe it is to link with Gila flats N.M, as the latin name for the Gila lizard is Heloderma suspectum. Anyone else that has some good ones like this one?
Good catch Graffen, brilliant for a non-resident. Are you a biologist of some sort? collecting punny names is a hobby of my wifes. One of my favorites is Pikup Andropov the russian delivery man. Back in the fifties and sixties the pun named railroads were endemic but seem to have fallen off now. My own Railraod I call Collier Bluffs and Poker Flats, but haven’t labeled any rolling stock yet.
It just occurred to me , that maybe you are in the medical field as there has been a fairly recently developed injection to help the diebetic which is based on the Gila lizards venom. BILL
They may have Gila Lizards someplace but here in Arizona we have the Monster of the species.
I know, Greg H.
I once had my car serviced by a guy named Lou Boyle.
In Portland,OR. there is a tire shop named Flatt Tire Co.
I had a layout with a pair of hidden staging tracks which represented both the east and west end of the line, a secondary main in East Texas. Needed two names for the same place.
Driving to Beaumont Texas on I-10 EB, I crossed a long drive over a body of water labeled “Old and Lost River.” Westbound the sign read “Lost and Old Rivers”. The rivers flowed together more or less in the vicinity of the bridge, and there was no telling where one ended and the other started. Sort of like my staging tracks that represented two different areas. I decided to call my east end of the line “Lost River”, representing my (unmodeled) version of Beaumont. The west end would be Old River.
But pretty soon it got confusing running between Old River and Lost River. Sounded too much alike. I needed to rename one and I have started thinking of a lot of industries etc connected with Lost River, whereas Old River was simply a connection to everything west, south and north. How about Spanish. One word in Spanish for old is “viejo” so my west end became Rio Viejo.
But viejo can also mean “old man” as well as the adjective old. So Rio Viejo can mean-
—are you sitting down?—
“Old Man River”
But what can you expect on a railroad called Santa Vaca? Holy Cow!
Very subtle. I like it. Much more creative than the Leakey Faucet Works or the Miracle Chair Company.
I personally liked the Gorre & Dephitade (spelling?) RR and from few months ago Whasup Dock Co. I thought of one named Rockbottom & Hardplace RR but it was so blantantly obvious that I never bother trying different speelings.
I worked with a guy in Houston who made the Beaumont run frequently - it took him years to figure out that the changed order on the signs was because there were two rivers!
I shouldn’t tease him… I never would have noticed!
Jim
A neat pun on the station, yes.
And while we’re on the topic of puns in real life, in Mossuri, I forget where now, stand two water towers.
One says Hot, the other says Cold.
My freelance pike, based loosely on the Seattle and North Coast, is named the Port Able and Pacific Railway. Port Able as in portable (it isn’t by the way). Also, the initials of the name are the same as the initial of one of the predecessor roads of the Seattle and North Coast, the Port Angeles and Pacific. And the initials of Port Able form the postal abbr. for my home state - Pennsylvania ¶.
Finally, I have a small scene that is supposed to represent the Discovery Bay sawmill from the Seattle and North Coast, which I call the Lost Bay sawmill.
-Kosmo
Been done, Doc. Back in the '60s MR ran a feature on a modular layout called . . . . . are you ready for this? . . . . . The Port Able Lines.
I knew I wasn’t smart enough to have been the first one to come up with that name! [;)]
However, it may be that the Port Able and Pacific is heading the way of the Dodo! Through my research into the Milwaukee Road heritage of the Seattle and North Coast, I developed a keen interest in all things Milwaukee Road.
My original plan was to make the PA&P a contemporary pike - ala Eric Boorman’s Utah Belt. However, it is becoming extremely obvious to me that to do so, in a realistic manner, would mean (for me at least) recreating the “G” word on nearly all of my freight cars. That is not something I can see myself doing.
So, now I’ve been toying with the idea of going back to a simpler time and modeling the Milwaukee Road in the Bitteroots in Idaho - concentrating on the 22 mile section from Avery ID to St Paul Pass Tunnel. I was inspired by a John Armstrong design for a layout based on that prototype in Creative Layout Design. I basically took his plan and stretched it out to fit the space I have available.
-Kosmo
It’s been said that on the old B&O low line one would travel west bound through Paw Paw, West Virginia… and east bound trains passed through Wap Wap… But I digress…
Before I changed the name to something more suitable at the urging of my operating crew,
this junction was called “Wye Knot Jct” so named because it was a track plan necessity to allow the layout to operate as a point to point, so what the heck, I figured, “Wye Knot!” (There’s also a farm, well, now it’s a McMansion farm near me that bears that name.)
Lee
Okay, let’s keep this thread going, until it knots up…
Looking for a name for my model railroad and for the name of the big city I wanted to model. My favorite prototype is Santa Fe from the time I got my Lionel warbonnet streamliner set in 1950-something. The Lionel catalog had an artist’s painting of the train going through what looked like Monument Valley. Romanticized Southwest. Southwest. A mission station like Albuquerque or San Diego or like SP’s in San Antonio. So many Santa Fe stations and towns had names in Spanish with some kind of a religious connotation. Santa Fe = holy faith. San Diego = Saint James. Santa Cruz = holy cross. And so on. I thought of a real Santa Fe town in California-- Victorville in the desert. And that reminded me of Vacaville, where there was some kind of prison disturbance. And the name Santa Vaca came. It means Sacred Cow, or Saint Cow, or Holy Cow!
On my layout I have a couple:
The Stave Brothers Cooperage:
and Spock’s Wingnuts (bigger ears for a better grip; the logical choice). Here one of their boxcars passes the barrel factory (cooperage):
Years ago, someone in MR had a trolley stop near the ocean named Sonova Beach…
My layout is the Mount Penelope Railway, named after my wife.
And that’s all I’m going to say about that…
Craig
Thanks for all replys on this.
BILL: I am an amateur Heretologist, so that is why I have knowledge of the latin names of the reptiles.
Leighant: Holy Cow. That was a good one…
Milepost 266.2: I agree, the puns shouldn´t be too obvious, I think.
Shayfan 84325: The Wingnut co. was a good one, any more trekkie puns “out” there?
Craig Cooper: That was a nice one… Say no more, say no more, nudge, nudge, wink, wink!
Great thread!
My Railroad is the Seneca Lake, Ontario, & Western. Our motto is, “We’ll get there sooner or later.”