There are some pretty interesting screen names among the posters here. Some named for a specific locomotive or specific RR, others perhaps a little more cryptic or mysterious.
Perhaps some of you would honor us w/ “what’s behind the screen name … and perhaps even more interestingly why you chose that?”
I work in the intermodal business - hence the screen name Doublestack.
Have a great day.
Mine stands for the ex-CNW SDCAT, a rebuilt SD45 with Caterpillar prime mover. Not sure why I picked it…since I like widenose power more, but it is unique and identifiable.
My screen name is my real name…I guess I just couldn’t come up with anything imaginative.
After some log in problems way back when, my name was assigned…now I use it all over the place when dealing with railroads and trains as a hobby or avocation.
Mine is from the neighborhood in which I grew up and is the only non-Metra suburban station inside the Chicago city limits. My avatar is the old Hegewisch station.
One day, way back in the '70’s, a few C&NW engineers went to downtown Chicago during our suburban job’s layover. We ended up seeing a movie called “Zardoz”. Some of the more ‘straight’ guys didn’t understand the movie at all, but a few of us that were more, shall we say, broad-minded (these were the days before Rule G was strictly enforced) were quite blown away by the movie.
After that day, each time any of us would meet on the high iron, we would say some line from the movie that made the biggest impression on us. Somehow, I ended up being called Zardoz by my fellow rail movie-goers, and since others heard our exchanges on the radio, the nickname stuck.
Zardoz (the movie) is rather strange. On the surface, it seems like a cheesy sci-fi flick; but there are many subtle themes and concepts woven into the movie at a deeper level.
I chose diningcar because I always thought the RR’s dining experience was a unique experience. The food was excellent and was presented very professionally.
I collect authentic dining car china, silver and menus.
Mine was associated with the job I did. I was a lubricator at the time,and was nick named squeeze the grease. I just shortened it as I never did like it, but couldn’t shake it.
First initial, last name, extra “R” just to distinguish my “RR” tendencies from any other Carl Shavers that might be out there.
Murphy Siding was along the Milwaukee Road, near where I lived east of Rapid City, S.D. It sounded more interesting than Boring Guy. [;)]
Well, I’m half Crazy anyway; so thought loco(short for locomotive also)
would be appropriate for that; and my dog is almost always next to
me when I’m at the computer (Mutt; which she really isn’t, but that’s
one of her nicknames.)[13 1/2 year old Huskie/shepherd mix, and very
much part of the family.]
Nothing cryptic: my name is Al, I live in Chicago, and my avatar is of me standing next to a PATCO train in Philadelphia shortly before riding the PATCO line.
I don’t know where that orange plume sticking out of my head came from; I don’t have the real Photo Shop program and had to use a lot of “tactics” to get a makeable small likeness of me. Long-timers will agree that it is much better than my original avatar, from Rochelle, where I was bleached out standing near an eastbound BNSF IM train.
ValleyX, short for Valley Crossing, south side of Columbus, OH, now NS/CSX, (I&O trackage rights) but once Scioto Valley/Hocking Valley, hence Valley Crossing. Tower long gone but a place familiar to my childhood.
I was an engineer for the B&OCT. BOCT8418 was a SW1 on the Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal RR Co. Rich
I am a navy veteran, and I remember the navy publications I read. One of them was Naval Aviation News, and there were several memorable features. One of them was “Grampaw Pettibone” allegedly written by a cantankerous old barnacle, who had a Dear Abby type of column about problems pilots face. He was amazed that most pilots had survived more than one carrier landing or other airborn mishaps, and his exasperated spicy answers were very entertaining reading. He began life in 1943 and is still around in 2009. When It came to choosing a screen name, it was a natural.
My screen name is pretty much what you would expect. I lived in CPR stations up until age 11. It was the norm rather the exception to have the agent’s family live behind and above the station office. As amazing as it may seem in these litigious and safety conscious times there were never any family members killed as far as the author’s of the definitive work on the subject “Canadian Pacific’s Western Depots” by Charles W. Bohi and Leslie S. Kozma were able to determine. We lived at Hatton, SK from 1954 to 1956 and then moved to Irricana, AB and lived there until 1965 when my father became a dispatcher in Calgary, AB until he retired in 1985.
I was exposed to telegraph, dispatcher’s phones, hand crank regular telephone service with an operator whose office/home was just up main street, big telephone batteries with the two clips on top, glass block signal batteries, hoops, signal flags, and kerosene lanterns. I’ve been in water towers, coal docks, sectionmen’s houses, roadmaster’s house/offices, section men’s tool houses and ridden engines, cabooses, and motor cars/speeders. My sister who was not born until we moved to Calgary says I am the oldest 55 year old she ever heard of. Oh, I forgot about having a boxcar of coal loaded into our basement every fall, and getting our drinking water from a tank car every Monday. It seems like there was always something going on, and I have no idea how many times I was as close or closer to moving railroad equipment as was the photographer in the mystery photo thread currently in progress.
I suppose you always want what you can’t have, but due to a physical disability and an inability to pass the colour blindness test I was never able to work for the CPR. I became an accountant instead. I talked railroading with my father at least once a day, I think, every time I saw him from the time I could talk until the day he died in 1992. I don’t remember steam o
My freelance (after a Japanese prototype) model railroad is the Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo - literally translated, “Richstream Valley Iron Road.” Tomikawa is a proper name that could have been a place name, but wasn’t. A former lady friend gave her surname to the valley, the railroad and the junction where it connects to the local mainline of the Japan National Railway system.
So, why do I model Japanese practice? Mainly, I’m modeling the Upper Kiso Valley as it was in 1964 when I visited it with my wife and our two (then pre-school) kids. We all loved the place!
What does my wife think about having the key point on my model railroad named after one of her predecessors? She knows that I met Tomikawasan on an R&R from Korea, and that caused me to request reassignment to Japan when all of my squadronmates were shipped back to the States - which led in turn to meeting and marrying my wife.
Then there’s the fact that my wife also has a railroad named after her - the Kashimoto Rintetsu (forest railway,) two of the stations of which are named after our children…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Senshi means soldier or warrior in Japanese. It actually is reference to an anime I like.
I’d been using this name on several other forums so I used it here to keep the number of user names I need to remember to a minimum. Also I figured that a foreign word would more likely be available than a more RR related one.
Agree completely - probably in North America, too, and maybe the world as well. Now there’s a possible thread topic, if someone wants to start it. Someplace I read that it’s the only one - at least for a major coporation - with an animal in it. Don’t know if that’s true, but that’s how I recall it. I thought it was great when it came back a few (10 ?) years ago.
Someplace I’ve got a poem from Trains back in the early 1980s - titled something like “Song of the Holy Name” - that ends with a line to the effect of, “And consign to outer darkness the dratted CP Rail”. I’ve been meaning to send it to the Tamarack folk music group (“Canadian Routes Music”) - Alex Sinclair, James Gordon, et al. - as a song suggestion, but haven’t gotten around to that yet. Someday . . .
EDIT:
The song of the holy name
Trains, July 1982 page 23
( CPR, “EMMOTT, N. W.”, POETRY, TRN )
Well, yeah, but…no explanation about how you picked your screen name. [(-D]