Talk:Atlantic City and Shore Railroad

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Short Line Railroad in Monopoly

Here is another plausible explanation of the Short Line railroad in Monopoly. Charles Darrow, who patented the game, was a Philadelphian. The Pennsylvania, Reading and Baltimore & Ohio railroads all served Philadelphia at the time the game was patented. No railroad serving Philadelphia was named “Short Line”. However, the Reading and B&O railroads shared track rights in and around Philadelphia, and both served New York City from Philadelphia, via Jersey City. The Reading and B&O jointly owned and used a section of track outside Philadelphia which served as a short cut on their New York City routes. That several miles of track was known as The Short Line, and still is used today, by the Chessie System. It seems possible that Darrow knew someone who worked for either the Reading or B&O, and heard them use the term, or he might have seen the Short Line referred to in a newspaper.

Franklin field 19:05, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a source for that (in newspaper/book etc.)? It sounds more plausible than the one currently listed, but I'd like a source of some kind before adding it. Griffinofwales (talk) 18:53, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Plausible theories and Wikipedia

There is a claim in the current version of this article regarding the use of the name "Short Line" as a railroad within the Monopoly board game. Said claim professed to be "obvious", so much so that it stated right in the article that no citation was necessary. Unfortunately, stating that a claim is self-evident and requires no citation does not make it so. A plausible theory about where a name came from that you thought of yourself is not a fact, it is only a novel synthesis of known facts to draw a (possibly accurate or possibly unjustified) conclusion.

As it is, the fact that there exists a type of railroad called a "short line" and the fact that there exists a square on the Monopoly board called "Short Line" may be related, or they may not. There are many documented cases of things, people, and places with the same names that bear no relationship to each other. In fact, assuming that they are "obviously" related on the basis of the names alone is called "Building the Frankenstein", and there is a whole Wikipedia policy about it.