Hello
Were I live, the Friday is 6 and a half hour old, so I’ll guess it is timely to start this thread.
For some time now I have been wondering about station names for my fictional railroad. I would like to hava a suggestion for a real life station name that is pronounced as short as possible, but where the written name is as long as possible. No nicknames please!
If you’re willing to go Brit, I don’t doubt that there are stations named Lester' and Wooster.’
Of course, in the Queen’s English they would be spelled Leicester and Worcester. (The same names appear on a map of Massachusetts, but I have no idea whether they ever had rail service.)
My own stations bear Japanese names - originally the surnames of models, showgirls and former girlfriends. They are now named for WWII Japanese admirals and generals - who happen to have the same surnames. My situation is 180 degrees out of phase with the goal you set.
For example, Tomikawa, eight roman letters, four kana (phonetic characters,) two kanji (pictographs.)
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Isn’t this blasphemy for anyone other than John Whitten to post the Philosophy Friday thread???
John, I expect you to use your powers as a Forum Administrator to undo this dastardly act.
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Rich
With all due respect, Olav, I have to agree with Rich. This isn’t exactly a philosophical thread as much as it is a thread asking for help with coming up with a fictitious name for a station on your layout. Had it included some inquiries and musings about how railroads came up with the particular names for their stations and why each of us chose the ones that we did for our layout, I might see it a bit differently. But, since it’s not - out of respect for John, I would personally change the name to something else.
My [2c]…
Tom
Better now?
Yea, that would be a great name for a station. LOL! [:P]
Tom
This may sound ridiculous, but our home-town station was named after the (existing) town, (this is the funny part, especially if you ever made home-made doghnuts) Cresco, (yes Like Crisco baking lard in a can, but with an ‘e’ !)
Ha ha, In other words, do a few internet lookups, including a slight mispellings, to see what slang your depot could get or resist.
Just a thought…
Here in Massachusetts, we often joke about the name of this town.
There is a town in northern PA called Hop Bottem on the old DL&W now CP. It was formally Foster The signs on the highway (US 11) point this out as part of a political compromise many yeas ago.So just about any name you can come up with would be OK.
Not exactly what the OP asked for, but is a list of weird town names in the US: http://www.accuracyproject.org/towns.html
A classic “weird pronounciation” joke in English is the made up name “ghoti”, supposedly pronounced “fish” (gh as in laugh, o as in women, t as the second t in station, and the final i is silent, or some such thing).
I know that there is at least one poster here who has a harbor theme layout with a sign that reads Ghoti something, but can’t remember off hand who it is - maybe Leigh Anthony’s (sp?) Galveston based layout?
Btw - love the Athol town name 
Smile,
Stein
I have no idea how "Philosophy Friday " got inserted into the title of TomikawaTT’s response; notice that it disappears three or four responses down the road. You, richhotrain; perpetuated this “dastardly” act by responding to TomikawaTT’s response instead of on the OP’s topic posting.
IF I understand this correctly, the OP started a thread called “philosophy Friday- Station names”…which Chuck {TomikawaTT} responded to along with another poster or two until The OP changed the title name to “station names” so as not to detract from Jwhitten’s “philosophy Friday” postings…
AS far as station names that are spelled long, but pronounced short, I am sure there are some very gutteral German or Scandinavian names {or not} that are spelled out long, but pronounced short. I wouldn’t look in English as a progenator of such. I know the german word for " a sunday afternoon’s walk in the park" is ALL ONE WORD. {I used to know it}.
OK, this whole thread has me confused. I did name a station on my layout “E Street” after my favorite band.
Not that much to be confused about. Olav initially chose a title which included “Philosophy Friday” - someone pointed out that it was not really a thread in the vein of John Whitten’s Philosophy Friday posts, so he went back and changed the title (after getting a few replies, which of course used the original title of the thread).
Olav’s initial question was essentially “looking for station names which have lots of characters, but is pronounced like a short name”. Essensially like a few English place names originating with Roman forts - like Worcester or Leicester
It morphed into funny sounding or looking American place names.
Smile,
Stein
Really just a mockup so far… boats not painted or detailed…
Long spelled name, short pronunciation? I was once planning a Louisiana-Texas border paper mill and read that one such mill was owned by a magazine publisher, Conde Nast publications. I imagined a plant connected by some interlocking investment venture with “Nast” but also with a Louisiana family withg one of those French names that uses a lot of letters for one syllable. It came out as QUEAUX-NAST paper co. And depending on how you pronounce it, it might come out sounding like a less than complimentary name for a Louisiana French group. I didn’t build the paper mill layout because i thought LOTS of people build paper mills. Used the industrial track plan as a military-complex track plan for a blimp base. Figured that was something NOT overdone.
Towns, cities and geographic features in my imaginary world (most of which not built and represented by staging)
Adding extra letters to a word to make it longer is sometimes fun.
I was the system administrator of a mainframe computer system many (too many) years ago that had a copy of the game “Colossal Cave” (AKA, “Adventure”) available on it and the game had some options that allowed me to alter the hours the game would be available to play. Unfortunately, the default “Wizard” password (“Gnomes”) was too well known and too many people could change the hours of play. So I changed the password and refused to tell anyone what it was. But there was one fellow that pestered me to no end to be a “Wizard” in the game and in a low moment I consented to telling him the password by whispering “Zilch” to him.
He ran off to the computer lab, but soon came back all despondent. Ya see, I didn’t spell it that way.
The computer system is long gone so I can tell all that I spelled it:
“PSYZLTCHE”
In like manner you can take other words and find alternate spellings for certain sounds. If the name begins with an “N” sound you can precede that with either a “G” or “P”. As in Gnat, Gnaw or Pneumonia. If it begins with an “S” sound you can substitute “PSY” (as in psychology).
As mentioned earlier, French spellings can be fun… such as “Sue” is spelled “SIOUX”.
“OUGH” is often pronounced “UH”.
Of course there is always the silent “E” on the end of a word (that does not necessarily cause the preceding vowel to be a long sound.
So to combine them; maybe take a name like “Nuhsu” and spell it “PNOUGHSIOUXE”.
BTW: GHOTI can also be spelled, “PHOCHE” (PHoto, wOmen, quiCHE".
Since you’re modeling the Eastern US, how about some Maine place names. A lot of them perhaps don’t meet the criteria, but there are some cool names.
I suppose Passagassawakeag is kinda out of the question given the above desiderata. Besides, it’s a river. Sill it’s a neat name. Accent is on the second syllable.
Well, there’s always Bowdoin (pronouneced BOdin with the accent on the first syllable).
While it doesn’t satisfy the criteria above, there is a town in Maine called Norway.
Guilford (pronounced as if spelled Gilford).
Mexico
East Moxie
Waite
Calais (pronounced as if spelled “callous’”).
Seboeis (not sure how it’s pronounced).
Vassalboro
Passadumkeag
Here’s a more or less complete list: http://docs.unh.edu/towns/Mainetownlist.htm Some ought to be suitable.
There’s even a place name I can’t repeat here. It’s not a town, but it’s a fairly well known location. You can find it here: http://strangemaine.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html Just tab down until you see a blurb that says “Subtle it, ain’t” with a picture of a sign. But again, it doesn’t fulfill the stated criteria.
Andre
Actually I thought one of the passwords in the game of “adventure” was “zizzy”- spelled “xyzzy” with the “x” as in “xylonphone”. At least that was in the MS “Adventure” game on MY old computer system from years ago in which you entered a cave and “found stuff” to carry back to a small house outside the cave where you could “tally up” what treasures you secured. Zizzy was supposed to be a sneaky code word you could use to automatically “telleport” you to the house to drop or get more stuff {once you found it scrawled on the wall of a room in the cave that is}. There may have been other passwords that I didn’t get to…and heaven help the guys who got stuck in the maze. Once in, unless you had a copy of the physical paper “map” of the maze to get out with, you were most likely stuck in the maze!
Along with Hop Bottom Pa. there is Meshoppen, Pa. The joke goes that a husband asked his wife what she had been doing all day and she replied “meshoppen”- “Me Shopping”. Both are south of Friendsville.
While we are on the subject of Pennsylvania funny names, down in the Amish territory of south eastern Pa. they have some, er, uh, “nifty names”- see for yourself:
Intercourse Pa is east of Bird In Hand, down the road from White Horse, all three of which are north of Paradise, but south of Blue Balls, and Ninepoints {which you may score if you get to one of those places} is south of all, but Fivepointville is North of all. Blue ball is near Goodville…which is what the ladies think if the men misbehave. If the ladies misbehave, the men may take them to Reamstown just for a lesson.
Paradise Pa. is where the steam train at Strasburg will take you should you ride it. So, Strasburg RR DOES advertise that they will “Take you to Paradise”. Only In Pa, though.
Yes, “XYZZY” was one of the “Magic Words” used within the game itself, but that was different from the Wizard’s password to set hours of operation of the cave (and some other options, which I don’t remember what they were… I am sure different installations, i.e.: var