1). Make sure it looks good in black & white as well as color. If it only works in color, then it’s not a good logo. There won’t be enough contrast to make it pop.
2). Don’t use a stylized large letter logo followed by the rest of the name in smaller letters. For example, imagine the “NH” logo in my avatar with a smaller “ew” and “aven” lettered to the right of the N and H, respectively. Don’t do that. Why? Because it looks like the NH logo and “ew aven”, not “New Haven”. If you want to have a logo and spell out the name, repeat the first letters over again, so it’s “NH” and “New Haven”.
3). Make it legible from a distance. It should be discernable from across the room; if you have to get close enough to read it, it’s not a good logo.
4). Resist adding detail. Simplicity is best as this is something that should be easily reproduced on everything from billboards to letterhead.
If you have Microsoft Word or Powerpoint, take a look at the Word Art section. There are a number of ways to manipulate letters and words, change their shapes, coloring, and texture. You might find your logo hiding in there somewhere.
When I thought I was going to model a freelanced shortline through central PA, I was on the lookout for heralds/logos. My partner brought home some foreign film and the logo of the production company (Cinematique Alliance or some such thing) was something like this:
And I had the logo for the Central Allegheny that never got built!
A little off topic, but related. Before I could even read, I remember the local way freight switching cars from a front window in my house, (that’s actually how I became fascinated with trains very early in life), and seeing the Ontatio & Western Railroad’s “O” circling the “W” logo. I always thought it looked very much like the logo for Volkswagen.
On another note, I have opted for a text logo (Like the New Haven’ “NH”) just using alphabet decals: Reporting marks for my railroad are “TEC”, so I just use a large “T” a smaller “E” and an even smaller “C”, all under the “umbrella” of the T and large enough to see from a distance.
In the 1990s I belonged to a club and our freelance railroad was the Middlefield Central & Terminal. I came up with this New York Central inspired herald:
Way back when my dad and I had a 1½" scale railroad. I hand traced this emblem from a Bessemer herald and he had them made into embroidered patches [8D]
My Elora Gorge & Eastern railroad is a freelanced line set in southwestern Ontario, a portion of the area through which the Grand River runs. The Elora Gorge was created by the river flowing through it. This area is also home to a large (over two million acres) Indian reservation.
The Indian head profile is a nod to the indigenous people of the area, and many of my passenger cars are named for the tribes or prominent individuals from them.
I sketched out the herald in pencil, using a reversed rubbing from a U.S. nickel as the centrepiece. The drawing was then given to my brother, who turned it into a photo positive (black on clear film), which was, in-turn, sent to C-D-S, to be turned into dry transfer lettering.
I’ve gone through three 50 sheet sets (each did at least two cars), and am now working on a fourth set, this time as decals from Rail Graphics.
My original timeframe for the layout was a vague '50s to early '80s, but I later back-dated it to the late '30s.
Rolling stock appropriate to the early version, at least boxcars and reefers, also got a slogan…
Cars from the more recent years lost the slogan…
…but when I sold-off all of that rolling stock and most of the diesels, in order to backdate the layout, I decided that a more sedate image would be required…
After I retired I decided to add a garden railway to my backyard. The name of the railway and the herald with the swayback donkey (mule?) is a nod to my many years of stressful hours and brutal on-call at work. Since I am of British heritage (mum born and raised in London) the British slang word “knackered” was well known to me. It basically means worn out or tired after hard work. It has it’s origins in the “knackers yard” where horses and mules were taken when they could no longer provide labor.
Wayne, you missed a sure bet in not keeping to the '70s prototype, where you could have gone to eye-blinding supergraphics (including the inspired-by-Ford’s-whip-inflation-now slogan WOW!) and your own even more instantly recognizable version of a broken dish. You might get neighbor complaints but your shippers would sure be impressed with your modernity!
You ought to make up at least one car in this scheme just to show how it was done in that age of blooming railroad renaissance possibilities…
I saw this logo on the side of a lumber mill in Eastern Georgia.
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This has features that would look good on a railroad herald. It is pretty traditional in a “railroady” sort of way, but the saw blade in the herald is a nice feature.
Replace the fish with what ever suits your railroad and then put the initials up top, B.A.S.S could be the Bakersfield-Albuquerque Shipping System, have a Cactus in the place of the fish.
I have always been partial to good imagery. I really like animals in a logo if appropriate. The CP logo has the beaver, maple leaf, and shield, I really like it.
I think I would try to incorporate a moose if designing my own logo. A big bull moose is a powerful looking animal, so is a grizzly.
