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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
[0]: http://mta.me
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.
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.
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.)
I got 5/9 on the Tube Sound Quiz!
(better than random!)
After being in Paris over the weekend the state of the underground cleanliness/noise is just absolutely shameful.