Identify a London Underground Line just by listening to it | Hacker News Reader

Identify a London Underground Line just by listening to it

tubesoundquiz.com

184 pointsnelson68759 comments

Incredible fun. I got every one wrong except the line I live on and use all the time. I couldn't tell any of the others apart much, but I knew my line instantly, without any doubt. Fascinating.

I'd put bets on yours being the Jubilee line then, that loud whine is etched into my soul. One thing this couldn't capture for the Central line is the sheer volume of it.

And, fortunately, the sheer temperature of it...

Given their username I would raise you that they're on the victoria line :-)

It seems a little unfair to include the circle and metropolitan lines as they use the same rolling stock and run on the same tracks in the centre of the city.

And yet I could tell them apart with pretty good confidence. Why?

You got lucky and thought it was skill?

I couldn't tell them apart

Got the Northern line wrong despite doing this quiz on a Northern line train. :(

«The screeches in the audio are not that bad, it can’t be the Northern» was my thinking.

I got 6 out of 9 and haven’t lived there in 10 years. Felt some nostalgia hearing some of them though!!!

I got 8/9. Been away 2 years. The ones I rarely used or which don't have obvious "tells" that are hardest. For me, Jubilee is the most obvious - very distinctive sound.

I got five and I have not lived there for over 20 years.

I got 5 out of 9 and have never used the london underground. The repeat multiple choice, a good memory, and me reading that the jubilee line makes a screech in the comments pushed me over that 50% mark!

love this kind of games, if we ever get consumer grade smell-o-vision i will make the same to identify berlin underground lines by smell

Oh Northern line, I would recognize that ear-splitting screech anywhere.

This should become a new round to compliment Mornington Crescent [0] on the BBC Radio programme I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_(game)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Sorry_I_Haven%27t_a_Clue

Loved this!

A bit deep to put district and circle as options on the same question. Don’t they use the same rolling stock and cover very similar stations?

I found Bakerloo was the easiest to identify.

Jubilee I found pretty easy too

And yet for me Northern was the only one I hit the answer on way before the clip had finished - instant recognition

The Bakerloo sounds are indeed pretty distinctive (I lived near Kilburn Park for a while and knew it well!). But I think the easiest of all is the Jubilee line. Those melodic sounds from the traction motors that rapidly change pitch when accelerating/decelerating are so distinctive and unique.

> Don’t they use the same rolling stock and cover very similar stations?

Same stock, yes.

But stations different. Circle is Zone 1 and so almost entierely covered except for very short sections. But District has a lot of open track sections.

Nice! It would be fun to include some of the other sounds on the tube like the door closing chimes or the sounds the doors make when opening and closing.

7/9, Met because I don't ever use it, and confused the circle for northern, which when I heard the northern line was a rookie mistake.

5 / 9

Found much of it pretty hard - I'd be confident of telling a modern subsurface line from a deep one, or the Jubilee (which to me at least has a very distinct motor sound), but for lots of the others I was guessing - sometimes with luck though, apparently.

From the title I had assumed this would be about the "old" classic "Conductor" Google Experiment by Alexander Chen[0] or a recreation of it.

[0]: http://mta.me

Never been to London, got 6/9. Presumably anyone who did this and got a poor score isn't posting, so only people like me who got good scores by chance are represented.

Got 3/9 and live in London. Really only a single one of which I both had confidence in and got right.

Most people on the tube have headphones in anyway tbh.

The ones I knew I got instantly. I think it's a mix of the speed + frequency that gives it away (rather than the various screeches people associate with various lines).

I spent a single day in the London tube about 3 weeks ago on travel. Have never been on the tube before. Was a cool experience. Somehow I got 7/9 on the quiz.

Somehow I got a 7 out of 9, even though I felt like I was mostly guessing. Surface vs deep lines have more rumble but that’s about it that I consciously knew of.

It was fun to guess these without being familiar. I sort of guessed based on vague knowledge of age and name familiarity. Maybe I was lucky.

I'd like this for subway escalator sounds, I loved one somewhere in Prague city center which made exactly Sicario soundtrack rhytm.

Hah, I just thought of this randomly the other day that London metro lines have such distinct soundscapes.

Enjoyed that. Not lived in London for 30 years, but some sounds never leave you...

I got 5/9 on the Tube Sound Quiz!

(better than random!)

I got 6/9 and I've never been there.

As a Yank, first thought that came to mind was using geolocation by mains hum because you can.

You can…but, won’t the frequency will be stable across the UK grid and these are all in London. Secondly, pretty sure they all use DC motors, so no hum

5/9 - I've never been in London and never heard these sounds before :)

Elizabeth is the only one I use frequently so I got them mostly wrong.

Technically, not an underground line.

And if it was, it'd be the Elizabeth Line line.

Nice name ;)

Quite fun. It doesn't make sense to have it as a list of multiple choice questions though since by the end you know the answers by a process of elimination. I'd change it so you see all the sounds and lines and have to match them up.

I agree. Might be more difficult to put on mobile but it fixes the process of elimination hack. I got 2 realistically but got 5 because I knew prior options.

Got the Northern and Jubilee right as I use them the most.

4/9 for me... no 'Lizzy Line though?!

Pretty cool —- should do it for NYC subways!

Doesn't NYC mostly (mostly) use the same trains across the network? on the tube, each line was (historically) operated by a different train company, so most lines have a (somewhat) different profile but dedicated rolling stock to each line, along with different aged stock dependent on the procurement cycle or even age of the line itself.

Boston T would be a better one as each of the colour lines are significantly different from each other, especially concerning green line trolleys. Even having not lived there for a number of decades I could probably still pick out at least red and green line. I might struggle to pick apart orange and blue line from each other as they are pretty similar trains, but I never spent significant time on that line... (My dad was a complete train nut and spent much of his spare time audio recording train rides around the world and when we lived in Boston, the local subway got the bulk of his attention. Here in the UK his hobby even got picked up by various TV companies and he got brought onto various talk shows to demonstrate his "Blind trainspotting" prowess by identifying various trains from their sound. All a ruse of course but it was a fun gimmick for a couple of years.)

Not that many different stocks now. The 4 sub-surface lines were given S7 or S8 stock according to platform length, and while it's entirely possible an S7 does sound different from an S8 I wouldn't count on it because these are basically the same train.

So that's a change from 5 stocks (two A variants, two C variants and a D) across four lines to two (S7 and S8) in terms of the rolling stock. The deep tube lines will all get variations on the 2024 stock, likely in 2027 although I believe the announced date still clings to "late 2026" but for now are all distinct.

Ah thanks. I had thought there would be some consolidation by now. It's been a few years since I regularly went to London and haven't been following it closely.

> The deep tube lines will all get variations on the 2024 stock

I think that's a bit optimistic. Right now, the only thing that has confirmed orders is the replacement for the 1973 stock (Piccadilly line). The same order also has options for further trains which would cover the Bakerloo, Central and Waterloo & City lines, but somebody still needs to come up with the money for it.

For the Bakerloo line trains (1972 stock) that's probably going to happen, since those trains really are getting long in the tooth now, but for the Central/W&C line stock (1992 stock) there's currently a refurbishment programme underway, so depending on how that goes, those trains will probably continue running for a while further.

That still leaves the Northern and Jubilee lines (1995 and 1996 stock respectively), whose replacement trains, whenever they might happen, will probably need a new tender – it could be that whatever train gets selected then will be a close relative to the 2024 stock, but I don't think it's automatically a given.

And the Victoria line – that one only got new trains in 2009, so those will continue for quite a while further and will be the last ones due for replacement on the deep tubes.

That's a good point especially about Victoria, by the time a 2009 stock train is at its replacement age the "new tube for London" design is probably going to look pretty archaic and budgets are always too tight to make a replacement early. Who knows, by then TfL might actually have a "driverless train" plan for these lines which makes sense.

The NYC subway (and elevated) trains were also originally operated by several different private companies, and there are still at least two major types of rolling stock (used separately on "A" division and "B" division lines). Maybe less variation than London, but I really couldn't say having never been to London.

Chicago's "El" and subway system AFAIK, uses the same rolling stock on all lines though there may be a couple of different generations of cars in service.

Good to know. I've never spent more than a few hours on NYC transit and I didn't notice many differences on the trains I went on, so was largely going by found media and assumption (terrible thing to do, I know!)

Never been to London, 3 out of 9 correct.

I got 7/9

Lol very funny!

Eh they all sound like SCREEEEEHEEEEECHCCCCHEEEEEE now anyway because TFL are incapable of doing basic maintenance overnight (such as grinding the rails) without using expensive contractors that eat money up.

After being in Paris over the weekend the state of the underground cleanliness/noise is just absolutely shameful.

are you aware that the Metro in Paris has trains with rubber wheels?

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