Whatever you decide, just remember than in many cases for the prototypes company names changed over the years. There were plenty of acquisitions, reorganizations, mergers, etc. If after a while you feel dissatisfied, just "reorganize" and..... Boxcab E50
Most times if you research history or rely on the prototype you'll find something that is 'just right'. In your case... looking at the map, I wondered if there were any predecessor railroads that UP sucked up in their expansion, and what they were named. I found a couple. But this may be the winner - "Denver Pacific" - which was actually in Colorado and southeastern Wyoming until about 1880. Denver Pacific Railway and Telegraph Company - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia And if that doesn't float your boat, check out this list: Categoryefunct Wyoming railroads - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia That "Cheyenne & Northern" sounds pretty cool, too. In actuality, when new shortlines and regionals are formed out of Class 1's, you'll find a lot of leaning on history, geography, etc.
Actually Slate Creek came by chance with this comment and photo I took on a temporary layout.. --------------------- In 1977 I swung by N&W's Slate Creek yard and caught GP9 740..Slate Creek yard serves Slate Creek industrial branch.
Since you're basing scenes from WY and CO, why not call it the Cheyenne & Wellington, since UP goes through Cheyenne on the Laramie Sub, and BNSF travels through Wellington, on the Front Range Sub, with both connecting in Cheyenne.
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! My railroading got started with a train around the Christmas tree, and after a while, I thought of a way the name Santa Vaca relates to Christmas. I will tell you in advance it is entirely made up. The Legend of Santa Vaca In one of the early Spanish missions established in Texas to convert the Indians, a priest was telling his congregation they should give to the church even though they didn't have much to give. He said that God can use our gifts more than we know, and he told the story of the cow who gave up her feeding stall to make a place for the Baby Jesus to lay. He said the cow's gift-- the manger-- became more a part of the Christmas scene than even the expensive gifts of the Wise Men. But the Indians confused the cow in the priest's Christmas story with a buffalo cow who was worshipped in their pre-Christian native religion and they began to bring back the cult of the Holy Cow. The Church tried to discourage the practice but could not stop it entirely. The village near the mission took on the name Santa Vaca, and it grew into a major city served by a subsidiary of the Santa Fe Railway. At the cathedral in Santa Vaca near where the mission once stood is a stained glass window with the manger scene featuring the Baby Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the Holy Cow, each with a halo.
Well I model AZ so I went with something related to that that rang out. Southwest Sunbeam. It's a fantasy scheme. RR's that run there are SP/UP/ DRGW/BNSF If I'm not mistaken I saw Silverrado Something and a Branch in your last post. That sounds good to me, and maybe a Industry or City after one or both of the two.
I think you nailed it!!! I have settled on the "WyCo Western Railway's Hillsdale Line". I can keep the two that I have liked the best and still have room for expansion since it is just a line in a bigger railway system. :tb-biggrin::tb-biggrin::tb-biggrin::tb-biggrin: Now that I have a name for it, I can finally begin work on a website for it where I can host all my pics and videos along with a blog documenting projects and such. Thanks for all the help guys and I will keep this thread open in my browser so I can post a link when I get the site underway!
The TCRR name was simple for me to choose. 1- I'm in Canada. 2a- I like to run long distance trains, rather than switching. 2b-My main line is 5 km or 3 miles long. 3- I have a flat section, for the prairies; some mountains, for the Rockies and northern Ontario; a hilly area for Quebec and the Maritimes. Therefore, the TransCanada RailRoad was born. Dave.
Thanks RG and I'm right there with ya FireChief! I LOVE a good long mainline run! Unfortunately with two small children and a limited budget (and even more limited space) I was confined to a 4x8 table. However, I fully intend on building a layout with a good long run of a few scale miles of flat, open Wyoming plains!
I pick mine for the potential in derogatory names. My current is Short Creek and Nopedale. The nineteenth century pike is Goat Hill and Wayte. Others that I considered were Sidon Hill and Wayte or Waydon Hall-Aldie.
I always wanted to run a train from Heere to Thayer, with Monroe just about halfway between the two in the middle of nowhere.
Not to mess up your mind too much....but it's been done in 12"=1' scale. http://www.railroadmichigan.com/hc1600.jpg http://www.trainweb.org/arkansastrains/railroad/dvs/DVS1072boxX/IMG29906.jpg Look under the cab on this one! http://www.railroadmichigan.com/hc1602s1.jpg I knew it sounded familiar. That's the only downside here, is if you don't put in something 'western-sounding', the assumption from some railfans and railroaders will be that this is the railroad you are modeling in Michigan. WyCo is also the name of a tool company, but no, I never heard of that before this moment! Turns out there is also a town by the name of Wyco, in West Virginia: WYCO, WV And it was named after the Wyoming Coal Company..... and is in West Va. That's happened around here, too. We have two historic towns submerged under the Allegheny Reservoir in PA - Kinzua and Corydon. They were connected by rail. Believe it or not, there's another "Condon & Kinzua" railroad....in Oregon. And to make it worse, Kinzua, OR was named after Kinzua, PA: Condon Kinzua Southern Railroad
The Bessemer and Shenango Valley My childhood was in western PA along the Ohio border near Youngstown. Trains running near my home included Erie, PRR, B&O, and the Bessemer and Lake Erie. Many of my relatives including my dad, worked on the Bessemer, and all of the towns in my area were in the real Shenango Valley. So, my layouts since childhood were the PRR, then the Shenango Valley, and now the Bessemer and Shenango Valley. Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman
There's a small place in Norfolk, not far from Lakenheath and Mildenhall for any USAF types on here, called GREAT SNORING. I read once of a layout called the Much Gossip, Great Snoring and Little Doing Railway. My own dear-departed UK outline setup was called Ingleside, based on the two peaks in the Yorkshire Dales - Ingleborough and Whernside. My supposed village was halfway between them. The forthcoming US outline is gonna be okay, based on the State abbreviation and spelt as Gonnabe. Regards, Pete Davies
The WyCo Western's page is now up! I will also add the link to my signature, but I wanted you guys following the thread to be the first to know! Thank you all for sharing your stories about how you came up with the names for your layouts and helping me with mine. Here is the link and I hope you all enjoy! WyCo Western Railway So far I only have three posts, but there will be more coming very soon!
I told the story of my "Santa Vaca and Santa Fe Rwy" name earlier. Holy Cow! When I was about 17 and started a mountain layout inspired by pictures of John Allen's Goree and Daphetid (I never got very far), I called my planned layout the Colorado Central, without a thought as to whether there had been an actual railroad by that name. When I was 26, I built a layout for a friend and his kids in their garage with mountain scenery and called it the "Sierra Pacific." When I was 30, I built a layout for two boys whose surname was Norton. The 2x4 layout was divided down the middle into two scene on two sides, one a small farm town with a trunkline railroad interchange, the other side serving a port. So the shortline was- the Norton Brothers Connecting Railroad. I later adopted the name "Norton" as sounding like "North End," for a staging yard at the north end of the impractical giant dream layout- my version of Temple, Texas, with the layout representing the 200 some-odd miles of Santa Fe south of Temple. I never ven got it finished on paper. When I was 50-something, I built a layout representing the trackage "aboard" a blimp base. The Navy referred to these bases using the formula: Naval Air Station LOCATION NAME (Lighter than Air). My blimp base near the imaginary town of Tidelands (my version of Texas City) would be "Naval Air Station Tidelands (Lighter than Air)" so the railroad would be the "Naval Air Station Tidelands (Lighter than Air) Railroad." Abbreviated to LIGHTER THAN AIR RAILROAD. "Tidelands" by the way got its name from the 1950s controversy I heard about when I was in Junior School School, over Texas having certain mineral development and regulation rights over offshore areas, called the Tidelands. My current layout under construction- thought of as part of the Santa Vaca subsidiary of Santa Fe, is the Karankawa Terminal District of SV&SF. Karankawa was the name of the native American group that lived along the barrier islands of Texas. I have been stuck on the name for 20 years, discovered there is an actual place called Carancahua Bay with a small inincorporated village, Carancahua Community. But mine is spelled differently and I'm keeping it! Texas has a LOT of similarly named places, and Texas is big enough for them to be a long away apart!
