My favorite roads are Chesapeake & Ohio, Pere Marquette, Hocking Valley, and Lionel Lines.  So, I came up with Michigan & Ohio Valley Lines for my own road and forum name.

It's my name

 

--Greg

My forum name is my name.  Seems the sensible thing to do. Certainly the easiest, yes?

I'm a die-hard Yankees fan and was fascinated by # 4 growing up. The speech that Lou Gehrig made still gives me goose bumps when I hear it. 

 

After watching Mariano Rivera last night, I could see changing my name to yankspride42. It brought a tear to my eye.

 

The Yankees, and toy trains, are something that connects the generations of my family. 

Found out my favorite railroad started out as the Philadelphia & Reading Railway & Mining Company, so I amusing phillyreading as my name.

Also the largest corporation during the 1890's.

 

Reading Lines was the fifth largest freight hauler in the USA during the 1950's.

 

Lee Fritz

 

I use the name of some guy that looks exactly like me...

 

Andy

I wasn't creative enough to think up a neat name!

 

Happy railroading,

Don

 

My friends and I would call each other a "cog" just because...kinda like a cog in the wheels of life, business, etc. I would always get elected to be in charge so "Captaincog" came to be me.

"Delusional Megalomaniac bent on Global Domination and Subjugation of Humanity" was too long, so I chose the Club reporting marks and my first name.

Mine simply describes the condition that I am trying very hard to remain in. 

My parents picked mine in 1942.

My name is Jeff Metzger. When I stumbled across the forum the first time I immediately wanted to join. I did not notice people's custom names at that point. When filling out the form somehow I did not enter Metzger correctly and it came out Metz.

 

Am I correct that the user name is not something you can edit once set up?

 

 

What's in a name?

 Me Alan Stephen Smith Jr.

  

 

My name is Rich Melvin but that was already taken so I used MartyE instead.

Well, there's a story behind mine.

 

In 1889, my dad's uncle bought a half interest in a hunting camp in far upstate New York near the St. Lawrence River.  Later, my dad's father bought the other half of the camp, which is on an island in a small lake.  Each of them left their half to my dad, and my dad left it to me when he died a few years ago.

 

My dad's family was from New York City, and to get to the camp they would take an overnight sleeper train from Grand Central up to the "Thousand Island" region of upper New York State.  By the time my dad was making the trip in the 1920's, the whole route was owned by New York Central.  But the northern route was originally built by a small local line called the Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg Rail Road.  

 

The RWO was known locally as "The Hojack Line".  Where the name came from or what it means is unknown.  There are several theories, but nobody really knows.

 

Around 1900, Vanderbilt's NY Central bought the RWO to gain access to northern NY and especially the Thousand Island resort region, with big stations in Clayton, Massena, and Ogdensburg.  Vanderbilt did not like the "Hojack" moniker and NY Central issued a directive that the name could no longer be used.  

 

Of course that was ignored: the locals were proud of their railroad and weren't about to be bossed around by the Commodore.  If anything, the name came to be used more, because of the prohibition. The railroad continued to be called "The Hojack Line" informally by the locals until the trains stopped in the 1970's.

 

The tracks are gone now, the right-of-way is a snowmobile trail, I get to the camp by car, and the site of the town station is now the post office.  But if you google "Hojack Line", you can read a very colorful history of my favorite fallen flag - a small, local, homespun, and very proud line through the north country.

Jeff,

Email the moderators and they will change it for you

My board handle is my initials, George F Tannery IV. In this age of computers, employers Google your name and look at your internet history. Handles work wonders to slow down the process. Google your name and see what you find.

My favorite branch of the New York Central RR.

 

Peter

Back when, ...we were joining AOL, my son was computing.  I was servicing a Lionel G.  He said "Dad, what do you want your login/logon username to be?"

 

Now I'm kinda indentified by it and use it for everything.

 

Oh yeah, the Lionel G, the Pennsy G is my favorite loco.

It works both ways and with more than just employers.  I was in DC at a business lunch with some people I didn't know but was hoping would back something that was important to me.    The guy across the table opened with, "You're into O-gauge model trains in a big way, aren't you?"  He had looked up all the professional stuff on my company's website and Linked In, etc., but found this forum, too.  Turns out he was into modular HO in a big, big way.  We talked trains and hobbies and that led to a really good working relationship.  I got the support I needed, and equally important, gained a new, and by now quite good friend. 

Ray L. Rhodes was taken...

 

Rusty

Flash is my nickname. Its kind of a shortened version of my last name. 

Most people I work with call me Flash. 

Potrziebie was one of those MAD™ magazine silly last names like Cowsnofski or Axolotl.  Occasionally they shortened it to Potrzbe.  Been a MAD fan since 1958 and a subscriber since 1984.  Even in an age of snarky, funny internetz, MAD can be brilliant (sometimes).

Ron, I can't tell you how often I share that same sentiment with others. The two things I have shared both with my long-gone grandfathers, parents, and my now-adult daughters are my trains and Yankee baseball. Both are very important parts of my life.

As to my forum name: when I first tried to sign up for Prodigy in the early nineties I inadvertantly put the name of the city in which I live in the box for 'screen name'. It rejected "Allentown" and suggested "Alentown". Not having a clue why that happened I just accepted it. Now, if I can only get Bluelinec4 to believe me! He just thinks I can't spell. But that's what old Brooklyn guys think of us old Bronx guys.

eddieg was taken!

 

Name's Pete and I reside in Texas.

 

Pete

Big O was railroad slang for a conductor. I added a numerical reference to my birthday because "bigo" is taken everywhere I try to establish a user name.

I did a lot of reading and learning from a lot of individuals on OGR before I ever joined. So when I did join the site I just thought it was appropriate to use my name instead of a nickname. I knew I would be on the site reading information  for a long time. It is the first and only forum I have ever joined.

Larry

What I collect and operate.

The Southwest Hiawatha is the flagship passenger train of the (fictional) Chicago, Milwaukee, and Southwestern Railway, a joint venture between the Milwaukee Road and the Southern Pacific providing rail service between Chicago and Southern California via Kansas City. The CM&SW has traffic agreements with the Kansas City Southern and connects to northeastern Mexico (including Monterrey, where I used to live) via KCS de Mexico. It also has connections to Guadalajara, Mexico via SP de Mexico. The Southwest Hiawatha travels on Milwaukee Road rails from Chicago to Kansas City, crosses four states on the Cotton Belt, an SP subsidiary, and rolls onto the SP main line at El Paso. It stops in Tucson, where I now live, and continues on to Los Angeles. 

 

My family is originally from two small Wisconsin towns, Oconomowoc and Nashotah. One set of grandparents lived across the highway from the Milwaukee Road main line, about half a mile from the depot in Nashotah. Visiting the grandparents during the summer I would watch the Hiawatha go by and count the cars on the freight trains. I spent my adult life wandering all over the world and decided to retire in Tucson, where I constructed my own little Chicago, Milwaukee, and Southwestern. 

 

Hojack: That's a great story. Always kind of wondered where your screen name came from. 

My initials.

 

I entered the internet thing waaaaay back in the Dark Ages (when my hair was dark... shucks... when I even HAD hair). That would have been back in the early 90's as I recall.  Back then lower case with no spaces or punctuation was needed most of the time for the addresses.  Thus, "laming" = My first two initials and last name.  By habit, this carried over to when I joined this forum in 2000 (as I recall?).

 

 

Trainman Jack was taken so I used what he folks at work called me.

 

Jack

One benefit of joining the forum in the very early days: hardly any names were already taken. 

Mine is from the reporting marks for the local shortline Puget Sound And Pacific Railroad Co., which is now owned by Genesee & Wyoming, and the year I joined the forum. 

 

Larry

 

 

I had this silly user name for a long time. It was the seventies, as best as one can recall the seventies. And Marathon candy bars had a series of these commercials. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkHD9xlYPM8

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfxsQuXkkeo

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XDaQUd6Qv4

 

One I can not find on You Tube or anywhere is the one where Marathon John, aka Michael Wayne, John Wayne's son, leaps off the tender of (I think) Sierra Railroad #3 onto the deck-plate and challenges Quick Casey to eat a Marathon bar fast. The engine was live and in motion, and it was a great commercial.

 

While these commercials were out, I was in college, and looking for a summer job, I thought it might be fun to hire out at a park I saw in the want ads, and see if they could use my skill sets of automotive design/mechanical engineering. What happened I was there at just the right time and soon found myself running restored steam locomotives in a loop around said park. I ain't naming names or places until I retire in a year or so and write my memoirs. While hiding behind a huge jug of wine.  

We would present the "Quick Casey" award to those who were caught by the boss for running too fast.

 

Running trains interfered with school so I never went back. I did this for a few years until I hired out on my first class one in 1979. It was all down hill from.....I mean the rest is history.

 

Here is a pic of me having the time of my life from more than half a lifetime ago.

 

EDIT: Well, look. Have two, they're small. One day I'm learn this software stuff.