I’ve been back and forth a LOT with town names on the various versions of the SNE, as long time members of the SNE Yahoo Group can tell you.

One story that may have a moral involves the name of the large mill town on the first SNE layout. Iain Rice penciled in the name "Okehampton" on the earliest SNE track plans. Okehampton is a real place in southwest England near Plymouth. He reasoned colonists from Okehampton would have used the name when they reached the New World -- very logical considering how often that happened. Problem was I didn’t like it so I changed the name of the town to “Mohassuck.” And therein lies a lesson.

It was shortly after the Southern New England was first published in Model Railroad Planning 2000 that I got a note from my good friend (and long time friend of the SNE) Bernie Kempinski. “Say the name of 'Mohassuck.' Say that with a eubonics accent: Moe’s - Ass- Suck.”

The next time I spoke with Bernie he quipped "So who's 'Moe', and why does his ass suck?" – thinking it was a bad pun, which it wasn't supposed to be.

As a rule puns (John Allen’s “Gorre & Daphetid” comes to mind – once you realize it’s pronounced “Gory and Defeated” or say the reporting marks as he did – the “G-D Line”) should be avoided on a model railroad since you’ll eventually get tired of explaining the joke to everyone.  

I certainly don’t claim the SNE is in the same category as the G-D Line, but it seemed prudent to take a lesson from John so I avoided puns as best I could. The irony of “Mohassuck” is that I named it in an effort to avoid it sounding like a bad joke.

I got the name by starting with Moshassuck, which is a real place in Rhode Island (adapting or altering regional names is also a good way to make a proto-freelanced railroad seem more realistic - name the town "Stafford Mills" instead of "Sallyville" or "Candi-town" after the wife, girlfriend, daughter or whatever).

Back to "Mo."

Mosha is an old friend of mine (he recently retired as a Colonel from the Israeli Air Force). Like most pilots he has a couple of nicknames - most unprintable - but "Mo" wasn't one of them. The problem, of course, is that spelled properly 'Moshassuck' sounds like I’m saying "Mosha-sucks," which he doesn't.  So I tweaked the spelling of the first syllable, changing it to “Mohassuck” – which in New England would likely be pronounced "Moe-has-sick." Bernie, and apparently others, didn't get that and felt I was insulting "Mo", whoever that is.

The new SNE doesn’t have a Moshassuck, Mohassuck, or any such town name on the modeled portion of the railroad. I am planning on using “Mohassic” - a slightly more "native American" spelling of the word - for a large paper mill. Crisis avoided . . . I hope.