What's in a name?
9I’ve had this big beautiful blow up fox for a few months now. Long story short, he’s an inflatable I’d wanted for a very long time, and I love him to bits! There’s just one problem: he still doesn’t have a name! I want to call him something railroad-related, like a partial railroad company name, a locomotive part or piece of trackside equipment, etc. However, despite my best efforts (including taking him trackside), the cognitive cogs just aren’t turning. I can’t guarantee I’ll use any suggestions offered, but maybe they’ll at least get the creative juices flowing, so to speak. Examples could include pieces of railroad equipment or tools (Spike), cities served by railroads (Altoona), names of companies or builders (Lima), or really anything related to trains and railroading in general.
Here is the boy:
Post your railroad-themed name suggestions below! 
- 28 comments, 36 replies
- Comment
Bandit.
@yakkoTDI But maybe save that name if there’s ever going to be an inflatable raccoon in the future.
@xobzoo @yakkoTDI Perfect, haha
Diesel or Loco for locomotive.
At first I said Captain but apparently the driver of a train isn’t a captain.
@Lynnerizer I actually have a wolf named Diesel already!
Bo-Bo
Def: the UIC[citation needed] indication of a wheel arrangement for railway vehicles with four axles in two individual bogies, all driven by their own traction motors. It is a common wheel arrangement for modern electric and diesel-electric locomotives, as well as power cars in electric multiple units.
@tinamarie1974
@tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI I’m reminded of the Best Friend of Charleston!
@tinamarie1974 That’s cool!
@tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI
https://www.thedodo.com/in-the-wild/gentle-gorilla-discovers-tiniest-new-friend
@PooltoyWolf @tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI
This?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Friend_of_Charleston
@Kyeh @tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI Yes!
@Kyeh @PooltoyWolf @tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI BO for railcars also means “bad ordered” and headed to the shop for repairs…
@Kyeh @llangley @PooltoyWolf @yakkoTDI so a bo bo would be a double negative? Idk, the site I visited gave the def I provided above. Learn something new every day!
@Kyeh @llangley @tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI Two different meanings, heh. Usually, ‘BAD ORDER’ is written out as such, and ‘Bo-Bo’ (usually British English, in America known as ‘B-B’) denotes a diesel or electric locomotive with four axles, two on each truck, all powered. A Co-Co, or C-C, locomotive has two 3-axle trucks, all powered. Fun fact: The Thomas & Friends character Boco is so named because he has 2 axles on one truck, and 3 on the other.
@Kyeh @llangley @PooltoyWolf @tinamarie1974 I was thinking of this in my earlier reply.
@llangley @PooltoyWolf @tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI
What the heck is that?
Ringo Starr? Dennis Quaid?
@Kyeh @llangley @PooltoyWolf @tinamarie1974 Don’t forget John Matuszak, Shelley Long and Barbara Bach.
It is Caveman from 1981.
@llangley @PooltoyWolf @tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI
Oh. Somehow I missed that gem!
@llangley @PooltoyWolf @tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI
Do you already have anyone named Loco?
@Kyeh @llangley @tinamarie1974 @yakkoTDI I don’t, heh
Lionel
My first thought was Timber. But I also like Coach and Dynamite.
Al, short for Allegheny, the monster of a 2-6-6-6 that was used to pull strings loaded with coal. The debate about whether the Big Boy or the Allegheny was the most powerful usually holds that it was second because the Big Boy had a higher tractive effort, but the Allegheny actually had a higher horsepower rating.
Loving the suggestions so far
Gandy (Dancer)
NorthWestern
Our family was clustered in various ways between northern Wisconsin and Chicago, and the Chicago & NorthWestern line was our main way to get from one cluster to the other. In my childhood it had the whole grand RR experience - fancy dining car, club car for the adults, observation car.
You’d also be welcome to use the many enchanted town names along the way: Fond du Lac, OshKosh, Neenah-Menasha (two distinct towns but they shared a train station), Antigo, Rhinelander, Lake Tomahawk, Woodruff, Lac du Flambeau (Lake of Flames - that’s our stop), Manitoish Waters, Ironwood.
@stolicat I always loved how the CNW put nose bells where the upper headlight would be on their Fs and Es.
Just googling around, I found the American Royal Zephyr, and the Angel.
(We had a cat named Zephyr years ago.)
And there’s a Fox River train in California.
@Kyeh I’ve got a winged wolf named Zephyr!
@PooltoyWolf Oh, perfect!
Kelso.
It’s a ghost town in California that used to be a major train stop back when locomotives weren’t as powerful to climb up some grades.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelso,_California
The depot was closed the only time I passed, through.
Morris?
Morse code is vital to the telegraph, which has some shared history with the steam engines.
And if you ever get a horse, you can name it Horace. They can communicate via Morse.
(This pun was brought to you by my not-very-successful attempt at extracting something from What does the Fox Say? Particularly 1:34-1:54)
He looks like a Berk(shire) to me.
Funicular Fox or maybe Trestle
Trainy McTrainface
Bullet
Caboose
Maglev
Whistlestop
Ty (Railroad Tie)
Truss
Piston
ChuggaChugga ChooChoo
Hobo
Rambler
Tramp
Sailor Jack
Leon Ray Livingston
Wanderlust
Tom Thumb
Jesse James
John Henry
Chunnel
Graffiti
Tank
Pullman / Porter
Tycoon
Stephenson
Carnegie
Vanderbilt
Gould
Morgan
Marco Polo
Ferdinand Magellan
Darjeeling
Snow Piercer
Polar Express
Glacier Express
Orient Express
Bernina Express
Maharaja Express
The Ghan
Rocky Mountaineer
Belmond Royal Scotsman
The Flying Scotsman
Paddington
Shinkansen
Gare du Nord
Euston
@Equemily Many of the historic things on that list are gone or greatly changed from what they once were, but many also survive. One of them is The Ferdinand Magellan, which is in much better shape today than when I last saw it in 1992.
And Ferdinand would be an excellent name.
@Equemily You forgot Thomas!
I’m not good with naming things, so not much help. Someone I used to work with named a pet fox Soinnach (Shun-ick), which is the Gaelic word for fox. I used to have a pair of foxes hanging around my backyard, but I never gave them names. Then my brother saw them and dubbed them Lady Fox and Sir Foxalot, which stuck. Alas, none of these relate to trains.
@rockblossom
Raised a couple of pigs we named “Porky and Bess”
Had a dalmatian we called Ember (I was in the local VFD at the time) and a German shepherd mix we called Berger (French for shepherd. We taught him all his commands in French).
I happen to live Just outside of Lima, OH, where the Lima Locomotive works was… the trains they’re most remembered for were the Shay Geared Models…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shay_locomotive
so my suggestions are either:
Shay, or Ephraim ( Ephraim Shay who invented the design)
Choo-Choo
Caboose, if you will be taking him along everywhere.
/youtube atchison Topeka Sante Fe
@f00l
Another version
(Judy Garland)
This is perhaps the edited version from That’s Entertainment
I think the original version in the film Harvey Girls was cut to something like twice the length.
Really liked the Shinkansen suggestion above 🫶
Couple more:
Yardmaster
Spur (Track)
Whistle, Whistle Stop, Whistles Top
BNSF: Buddy Needz Some Fun
All of the good ones are taken, so I don’t have a name for you. I just wanna see what you choo-choo-choose!
@Thumperchick
I can’t believe I didn’t think of Fantastic Mr. Fox until now.
I’m so embarrassed I didn’t think of it right off.
Was a decision ever announced? (And if not, I will note that the name “Choo-choo bear” is used for the pudding cat character in Something Positive.)
@werehatrack See the bottom of the thread
How about Stanford?
After Central Pacific President Leland Stanford who drove the golden spike
And it kind of sounds like Sanford as in Fred Sanford as in Redd Foxx
@ybmuG <mode=“history_pedant”>Leland Stanford and Thomas Durant both missed the spike on their first two attempts, and it was driven home by the two actual crew guys who were standing by. The spike was then pulled out and replaced by an ordinary iron spike. Stanford carried the one from the ceremony back to California, and IIRC, it remains in the collection of Stanford University. </mode>
I know this only because I visited the site of the ceremony earlier this year. They have replicas of the two engines that were present.
@ybmuG
@werehatrack i had read that. Wish somewhere the names of the actual people that did the spikes were recorded.
Since PoolToyWolf might appreciate them, here are a few photos.
@werehatrack Beautiful trains.
I have chosen a name! Foxy will be called Frisco after the Saint Louis & San Francisco Railroad! I like the way it sounds (kind of like ‘frisky’), and as an added bonus, the Frisco painted their diesels orange and white…like a fox!
Frisco merged into the Burlington Northern Railroad in 1980, and is today part of the BNSF Railway system.
@PooltoyWolf That’s a great name!
(Is that one of his brothers in the background?)
@Kyeh That’s actually one of Loba’s relatives, Reinhardt!
@PooltoyWolf Oh, cute!