Being a young rail enthusiast, there were a few I'd misread.
1. I would read of accidents and there was one in 1975 at a place with a very odd name indeed!
'Nunerton'... 'Nuneton'... 'Nuneantion'?
Turns out it was Nuneaton.*
2. In the magazines, they used to use the word
'Adjacent'
A lot for a while when describing things in photo captions.
I always read it as
'Adjanct'
I'd never seen nor (knowingly) heard the word before.
3. Then there was the class 86 that was named after the founder of Wolverhampton
'Woofla'
Turns out is was
'Wulfruna'.
The word was obviously so alien to me that I just made up my own 'Woofla' name instead, a bit like Adjacent and Nuneaton. 😆
4. The biggest rival for a while to Hornby was Lima and the models were made in
'Vaysenza, Italy'
With the 'ay' sounding like 'eye'
It was 'Vicenza'.
* - One of the locos involved at Nuneaton was 86242, named 'James Kennedy G.C.'.
I thought it was named after JFK!
There was a class 25 named 'Mercury' and I thought it was named after Freddie. There was also one called Sybilla, which I naturally assumed was Cybil Fawlty.
Oh and there was also D827, 'Kelly'. I thought it was the girlfriend/wife of the person in over all charge and not HMS Kelly, named after Admiral Kelly.