Name needed for my layout. How did you choose yours

I don't really refer to my layout by a name - it's usually just "the layout"! However, I did choose the fictional station names to suggest real locations without having to be held to following any prototype.

My layout is based on the Southern Region of British Rail(ways) but can "move" according to whether i want to run, for example, the Bournemouth Belle, Brighton Belle or Golden Arrow (Western, Central and Eastern Divisions, respectively). Also, I needed somethng that allowed me to run London Transport trains at the London end of the layout.

With all that in mind, I came up with High Cross using New Cross as the inspiration (although it probably represents places like Richmond or Wimbledon just as well), and Middlehurst from Midhurst in West Sussex, although the track layout bears no resemblance to that either.

I subsequently found out that there is a real High Cross, in the London area of the Eastern Region out of Liverpool Street! So, even when I'm making up fictional names I can't win!!!!

My earlier layouts were:

1. The Glasgow Subway (based pre-1914) containing a typical station and the car sheds lifting pit and that was just called 'Glasgow Subway'.

2. The next one was a reasonably accurate representation of an Irish brach line halt called 'Dunsandle' which was the intermediate station on the Attymon Junction-Loughrea branch.

3. My first Continental one was of a Wagons-Lits coach depot called 'Ouaisne' pronounced Wayney and taken from a Jersey road map!

4. My first American one was an HO version of an N gauge layout seen in a former model shop in East Mission Street, San Francisco and I named it 'East Mission Street Yard'

5. Walmington Pier Tramway came about as a desparate measure to find a name for this layout 48 hours before its first show and the phone conversation between Exhibition Manager (EM) and myself (DC) went something like this:

(EM): We've been hit by a flu epidemic and lost 8 exhibitors, are you fit enough to bring your pier layout along?
(DC): Aaaaaaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!
(EM): What's up?
(DC): Its too minimalist, I'll get laughed out of the exhibition
(EM): No you won't, it'll go down well.
(DC): If you must
(EM): Great!!!! What are you going to call your layout?
(DC): I haven't a bloody clue!!!
(EM): I can't put that on show
(DC): I can!!!!!!
Dads Army closing theme was heard simultaneously on our televisions
(DC): Oh bu88er it, let's call it 'Walmington Pier Tramway'
And the rest dear reader, is history

Dave

QUOTE (Piermaster @ 11 Aug 2008, 19:13) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>(DC): Oh bu88er it, let's call it 'Walmington Pier Tramway'
And the rest dear reader, is history
I love that story Dave!

I find it impossible to think of something to call my layout which is still at the planning stages, but as it's based on Ötztal in Austria I could perhaps use that and call it the Ötztalbahn. (Hence why my website is called Eurofima (a type of coach) Prima! ...I just couldn't make up my mind!)

Other choices are:

Gödelbahn
Putzibahn (a squirrel in a German hörspiel)
Tiroladlerbahn (literally Tyrol Eagle Railway)
Wildschonaubahn (a nice valley in the mountains above Wörgl)
Wörglbahn

So I'm clueless! I wish you the best of luck Harkins! (Harkinbahn?)

I generally go for a real place where there's no railway station which is vaguely in the area of the region I'm modelling (or a preferred region if you model anything and everything) and call it that, e.g. Leaves Green is the present working title for a pair of unbuilt DC Kits Tadpole units. Lazy but effective. Once, though, I did get the strangest inspiration for a layout name: Marks and Spencer had an ad campaign with a song from the 1960s about doing drugs and hippie love and buying their new summer range &c. and, since it was never off the air, I became really rather taken with what I thought to be "Itchingcombe Park" in the song. Turned out it was called "Itchycoo Park" (too good to be true, eh?) but Itchingcombe, as my poor hearing had suggested, still sounded rather nice and also very Southern (and very generic Southern: it could be anywhere, from next to Addiscombe on the trams in Croydon to near Itchingfield Junction at Christ's Hospital to a sunny South Coast resort) and so down it went! Or you can combine random aspects of place names, -ton, -ham, -wich, -mere, bury, combe, North, South, East, Magna, Parva, Great, Little, Vale &c. with either a local name from the area (e.g. there are several "-wittons" in Northumberland so one project which never got anywhere was Southwitton") or a family name &c.

Kain
I found a name for my layout after thinking about it a while i decided enough thinking and more track building was called for, and so the name evolved from my sis's name as i would like to dedicate it to her, you know who i mean.

Called it 'MORGANTH'

After all locos are named after women so why not the layout

Keep an eye open for progress on her in the near future .......... now wheres the glue and track

My layout is named after a very nasty place I went to once with a 'Flying Dutchman'

"Worldsend"

Cpt Jack