Well, here are a few nuggets for consideration.
Brian talks about the term "hi-rail" as most likely coming from the height of tinplate track. This is what I always thought. Then recently I unearthed and thumbed through a copy of 'The Model Railroad Book" by Warren Morgan. This was published in 1953.
In the book ( page 19) Commander Morgan talks about the origin of the term. Here is the gist:
In the late 1930s, while building one of the first "hi-rail" layouts, his sons decided they needed a password for their family train club. Pop suggested "Hi, Rails!" because railroad buffs in the Navy were called "rails". In 1940 this layout was featured in Model Builder. Dick Robbins of Polk Model Craft Hobbies in NYC liked the article and was interested in promoting the use of "tinplate" on realistic model railroads and sold Charlie Penn, editor of Model Craftsman, on the idea of a series of articles on mixing scale and tinplate and they needed a name. Mr. Morgan then suggested "Hi, Rails" and the term caught on and became "hi-rail". Make of this what you will, but since the story of the origin was published in 1953 and Warren Morgan was a respected writer on the hobby, it has a certain plausibility.
The other little nugget is something I have always found interesting. Lionel, in its early marketing, coined the phrase "Standard of the World". They then reinforced this by calling their largest trains "standard gauge". There was of course no such thing as a standard gauge in toy trains at that time. There was however a "standard gauge" in full size railroading and that was 4' 8 1/2". ( How that happened is a discussion for another time.) The two uses of "standard gauge" of course have no connection, but this must occasionally be confusing to newcomers to the hobby.
