Afraid not – They’re just the regular “English language” town names. If you’re playing the German version, you’ll get German towns (equally silly ones). Both are kept in easy to edit files if you want different names though.
There’s just the one gamemode right now – The economy probably hasn’t been entirely balanced yet I imagine. (The 1% loans are a bit of a no-brainer at the moment).
Everything is expensive early on, especially the railroads (Doesn’t help that the trains are really slow and powerless early on either) Hope I’ll be able to take a savegame to the lategame and see how the economy adapts – beta stability willing. 😀