Rename CSX

A recent subject has been BNSF and it's "name." We should have the same conversation about CSX. I suggest Seaboard & Ohio. Covers both parts of the system (Seaboard and Chessie) nicely, I think.

New York Chesapeake & Louisville Coast Line.

nah..too wordy..but it works!
fits in most of the major players..except B&O..which is really the primary ancestor!
(unless you consider Chessie = B&O..)
Scot

How about the New York, Baltimore & Chesapeake System?

Charlie

Be careful what you wish for - if CSX Corp. ever decided to rename the railroad or the company, the new name would undoubtedly be some blandly generic moniker like 'US Rail', not a traditional name with a geographic reference built in. At least the 'CSX' initials reference Chessie and Seaboard.

RailBus63 wrote:Be careful what you wish for - if CSX Corp. ever decided to rename the railroad or the company, the new name would undoubtedly be some blandly generic moniker like 'US Rail', not a traditional name with a geographic reference built in. At least the 'CSX' initials reference Chessie and Seaboard.

Yep, kind of like "Conrail!"

Charlie

Biggest waste of money that ever was, was when Seaboard went to the Family Lines and then System System Railroad or maybe it was the other way around. The printers and neon sign makers made a mint cause the all the printed stationary was sh**canned, decals on vehicles were changed and the signs on the GOB in Jacksonville had to taken down and replaced. Thousands of dollars down the drain.

Wannabe Conrail

Chesapeake, Baltimore & Ohio Atlantic Seaboard Coast Line & Louisville & Nashville & Other Places Railroad.

It's unfortunate that they didn't come up with a real-sounding name at the start, which had been the original plan. I always remember the Trains report at the time in which a company official was quoted as saying "You'll never see CSX on a boxcar". But that indeed became the corporate name and it's probably too late to change it now, especially since as Mr. Railbus suggests the alternative is likely to be Giant Mega-Railroad or something equally generic.

Won't happen. Collectively as a population we seem to be handed shorter and shorter names for things: KFC for example, not Kentucky Fried Chicken. The History Channel's logo is just "H". Etc.

umtrr-author wrote:Won't happen. Collectively as a population we seem to be handed shorter and shorter names for things: KFC for example, not Kentucky Fried Chicken. The History Channel's logo is just "H". Etc.

This is not new to the railroad industry, of course. Consider:

- The Pennsylvania Railroad, often shorted to Pennsy.
- The New York, Chicago, & St. Louis was shortened to the Nickel Plate.
- The Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis was shortened to the Big Four.
- The Chesapeake and Ohio and Baltimore and Ohio Railroads became C&O and B&O, respectively.
- My personal favorite, the Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific Railway Company, which no one ever says except as an example of a ludicrously ambitious title.

Those weren't official names, but they might as well have been. CSX just beat everyone to the punch.

I'm not sure -- didn't the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sioux Ste.-Marie officially adopt SOO LINE around the 1970's?

Way off topic but KFC was changed more for the health appeal to remove the " Fried" from the sign name. From the great read " The Men Who Loved Trains," it was Chessie Seaboard and the X was to denote the merger. Remember when they slapped Conrail Quality in 3/4 of the fleet in the early to mid-nineties?

In SE PA, PECO used to be Philadelphia Electric Company. And if it had survived on it's own, Reading RR would prob ably have become RDG.

Doug M

My thought for this was the Atlantic & Mississippi, for the rough geographic reach of the system.

Same name could serve for "Norfolk Southern," which hardly describes its system any more.

ExCon90 wrote:I'm not sure -- didn't the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sioux Ste.-Marie officially adopt SOO LINE around the 1970's?

Sault Ste Marie, but yes, it officially changed its name when officially merged with the DSSA and WC, I believe. 1961 maybe.
Meanwhile the Milwaukee Road didn’t become The Milwaukee Road until 1981.