How did youcome up with your layout's name?...

Martin Field

Western Thunderer
I have asked some serious questions on here, all very readily answered, so how about a less serious one. How did you come up with your layout's name? Some are of a kind that becomes immediately memorable, some less so and some, let's face it, are just silly, but where did they come from?

I'll start with mine. I was forced to read a book at school called Silas Marner, by George Eliott. I remember little about it except for the fact that it contained a couple of good names. Lantern Yard, where Silas grew up and Raveloe, where he moved to later. Hence my little set-piece is Lantern Yard and anything bigger if I ever did such a thing would be Raveloe.
When I made a start on a 1/32nd scale narrow gauge layout set on the Essex coast it was to be known as Havengore as in Havengore Creek, one of the many little rills and waterways that separate all the islands in those parts. I realised I had insufficient space for Havengore, so gave it to a friend. He then died soon after and I haven't heard of it since.

My current standard gauge plan is for something on which to put a couple of models of local buildings that I made decades ago and have carted around with me for all that time, mellowing beautifully as only time and dust can do. The garage is known as Riverside Garage and so that's what the set-piece will be known as.
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Tony Moss's Riverside Garage
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The motorbike shop

I think the best names come from books though. Being a collector of Tom Rolt's works, Winterstoke would be an obvious choice, since I have that very rare work on my shelf.
 

Martin Field

Western Thunderer
Wow, what a nice shot, but I thought it was a painting! Is this some new kind of photography, a la Nevard?
But, whatever, it's great reference, Osgood, many thanks.
 

Osgood

Western Thunderer
It is relatively new-fangled, Martin - called HDR (high dynamic range). If done with moderation it gives a lovely 'painting' effect to a photo, just as you identified. If overdone it becomes very 'odd' to my eyes.

See High-dynamic-range imaging - Wikipedia

If the effect appeals to you it is well worth having a wander through the Flickr albums of the chap who took that bike shop pic - some great images to be discovered. Click on his name, then click on 'Albums' and say goodbye to a few valuable modelling hours!!
 

steve1

Western Thunderer
With my current layouts they are:

Duncan's Mine 2 (US HO) - Well, I sold DM1, so this is the second iteration. As for the other bit, my wife's maiden name was Duncan and she's mine!

Starker Verkher (German HO) - It translates as Heavy Traffic. It uses the same trackplan as the BR layout I built a while ago with that name. And where did that come from? It's the name of a Status Quo album :)

Catte Lane (BR Blue 16.5mm) - Er, I like cats...

steve
 

Jim smith-wright

Western Thunderer
HDR has been around for well over 100 years so it's far from new. What Chris N does is more like focus stacking which has also been around for a long time. The look seen in a lot of magazines (I guess it's what they ask for) is simply down to over processing. It results in a very punchy but not all that realistic image. (Guess who used to be a professional photo-finisher for nearly 10 years?)

As for layout names, I'm not that clever. P4newstreet because it's new street in p4 and Brettell Road because it's like Brettell Lane but a bit different.
 

Dan Randall

Western Thunderer
It is relatively new-fangled, Martin - called HDR (high dynamic range). If done with moderation it gives a lovely 'painting' effect to a photo, just as you identified. If overdone it becomes very 'odd' to my eyes.

See High-dynamic-range imaging - Wikipedia

If the effect appeals to you it is well worth having a wander through the Flickr albums of the chap who took that bike shop pic - some great images to be discovered. Click on his name, then click on 'Albums' and say goodbye to a few valuable modelling hours!!



I just took a look at his (Steve James), "Living Museams" gallery and was blown away by the pictures he'd taken! Thanks for bringing it to my attention - I shall certainly be making further visits. :thumbs:


Regards

Dan
 

Mr Grumpy

Western Thunderer
I had intended to build Tetbury, and have bought and built the buildings in readiness. However, I have since discovered that I just can't convincingly squeeze it in to 18'6", so I designed a fictitious layout, and renamed it Titbuty because I felt a bit of a...
 

cbrailways

Western Thunderer
I wanted my layout to have the 'feel' of Stourbridge Town (Single platform at the end of a double track branch with a line off to a canalside wharf). Hence the layouts name 'BLACKBRIDGE TOWN (RIVERSIDE)'. I chose BLACKBRIDGE after going through all the possible colour combinations and felt that it reflected my layout setting which is somewhere either in South Wales, or the South Midlands.
 

Jordan

Mid-Western Thunderer
I bought my smallest layout from someone, who had already named it "Lyddlow", as it's a 'Little O' layout. Awful pun, but apt enough.

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My other UK-outline layout I named "Withyn Reach", which I liked as a more subtle pun; in fact I blatantly copied it from a small 4mm scale Light Railway layout that had that name, & was for sale at an exhibition many years ago.

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American layouts; "Portway Center" is fictional; There's an area near where I live called Portway, which I used for my fictional Short Line called the Portway Terminal RR. There are many small US towns that have 'Center' as part of their name, usually to distinguish them from the next town along which might be, for instance, 'Portway East'.
This is the portable version:
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My under construction loft layout has also inherited the name:
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"Schiller Point" is a fictional bit I've imagined to be part of the real Schiller Park Yard in north-west Chicago; at one time the Soo Line's main yard there and the most south-westerly point on the Soo Line system. It later became an Intermodal Yard for Canadian Pacific, and is currently closed, as I understand.

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Alan

Western Thunderer
Wencombe came from a suggestion that Newcombe would be a good name for a west country layout. I thought that a little too obvious so switched the new bit around. Kingsbridge Regis, Wencombe branch was always meant to terminate at Kingsbridge, so when I built the terminus I added the Regis bit as the track plan was not the original Kingsbridge station.
 

allegheny1600

Western Thunderer
I've rarely gotten far enough with a layout to christen it but my US layout is called "New Ulm" because it's a real place on "my" railway even though there are substantial differences between my model and reality and at one point, I was going to do "New Ulm" for American, "Neu Ulm" for German and "Old Ulm" for British!
My other project is currently christened "Irgendwo", German for "Somewhere" however, there are several layouts with this name so I need to find a new name for this one, any suggestions for a typical Prussian place name, bitte?
Cheers,
John.
 

Heather Kay

Western Thunderer
When we had exhibition layouts, they were meant to be in the general north Buckinghamshire area, what is now Milton Keynes. We invented a "might have been" garden city, christened Linford Garden City.

From that, three layouts were named: Linford Shed, Little Linford (there really are places called Great and Little Linford in the area), and finally Fenny Linford.

We called ourselves The Linfords for exhibition work. Sadly, only the shed layout still exists, although it's not exactly in working order any more.
 

JasonD

Western Thunderer
When my mates at school and I were looking for a name for our group, Tim said he'd been to Quince Corner in Essex for the weekend, so Quince was chosen. When I was desperate for a name for the loft layout 10 years later, Quince Valley RR seemed American to me. I also used it as a trade name for the railway biz, as the wife said "no-one else will use Quince Valley Designs". Right again...!

I was born round the corner from Clifton Down station in Bristol, so a name including Clifton was a possibility and then the Delaware & Hudson RR that I model spookily moved head office to Clifton Park, NY. Maybe I should take a pic of a 3D O-scale figure of me, with a caption like 'became millionaire in later life...!' Now, Clifton Center, East Clifton ... Clifton Corner! Nah....
 

Wagonman

Western Thunderer
My layouts – more properly layout 'ideas' – involve real places that unaccountably were never granted the benison of a railway, but which clearly ought to have been. The real location imposes a few useful (?) constraints on the imagination, but definitely helps with the back story. And with the production of maps...


Richard
 

Heather Kay

Western Thunderer
linfords location map.gif

Here's the map of Linford Garden City, with the network of lines servicing it. Some of them are real and existed. Extra points if you can work out which ones are fictional.
 

geoff_nicholls

Western Thunderer
I'm a bit of a dabbler, as far as rolling stock goes, and my basic layout is generic, it has only a wooden fronted wharf, and only part of a bay platform. By changing the buildings and lineside features, it can be adapted to suite the locos and rolling stock. So I search around for a suitable location, usually using the old 25" OS maps available online. Chiefly it is pre-grouping Great Eastern, so I found the projected harbour at Aldeburgh. But I'm also building an Eastern Counties 2-2-2WT, for which drawings of coaches are available, but little in the way of goods stock. However there are plenty of drawings of LNWR goods stock of that period. There's only one place where the ECR met the LNWR at a wharf in that period, and that's around Peterborough, hence Woodstone Wharf.
I've also got a Class 121 DMU sitting on a shelf. If I succeed to swapping my 4F for a pannier or 45XX the the layout can easily become Brentford Ferry, a "might have been" extension of the Brentford branch where the passenger service (and the ferry) survived into the 1960's and there were wooden faced wharves.
 

Lyndhurstman

Western Thunderer
Watkins Wharf - even after 20 years a shockingly ply-coloured desert stuffed into the northeast corner of Limehouse Dock via compression techniques a black hole would die for - was so-named to honour my maternal grandfather; a lovely, decent, and kind bloke who rose from an orphan in a workhouse on the Welsh borders to become mayor of Plymouth. The alliterative addition of the Wagon Works into this sketchy scenario was just too good an opportunity to miss. I like words, me. And puns. And wagons, trackwork, and East London, too.
 
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