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.
walthamstow•Apr 7, 2026
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.
sumo89•Apr 7, 2026
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.
CamouflagedKiwi•Apr 7, 2026
And, fortunately, the sheer temperature of it...
doublesocket•Apr 7, 2026
Given their username I would raise you that they're on the victoria line :-)
OPBoot•Apr 7, 2026
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!)
jojobas•Apr 7, 2026
I got 6/9 and I've never been there.
MrsPeaches•Apr 7, 2026
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.
ssss11•Apr 7, 2026
Jubilee I found pretty easy too
OPBoot•Apr 7, 2026
And yet for me Northern was the only one I hit the answer on way before the clip had finished - instant recognition
Reason077•Apr 7, 2026
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.
traceroute66•Apr 7, 2026
> 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.
ssss11•Apr 7, 2026
I got 6 out of 9 and haven’t lived there in 10 years. Felt some nostalgia hearing some of them though!!!
calpaterson•Apr 7, 2026
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.
graemep•Apr 7, 2026
I got five and I have not lived there for over 20 years.
gamerDude•Apr 7, 2026
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!
manojlds•Apr 7, 2026
Elizabeth is the only one I use frequently so I got them mostly wrong.
maleldil•Apr 7, 2026
Technically, not an underground line.
walthamstow•Apr 7, 2026
And if it was, it'd be the Elizabeth Line line.
mpascale00•Apr 7, 2026
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.
spuz•Apr 7, 2026
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.
calpaterson•Apr 7, 2026
And yet I could tell them apart with pretty good confidence. Why?
IshKebab•Apr 7, 2026
You got lucky and thought it was skill?
agile-gift0262•Apr 7, 2026
I couldn't tell them apart
dudefeliciano•Apr 7, 2026
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
jeffwass•Apr 7, 2026
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.
fennecfoxy•Apr 7, 2026
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.
reifiedgent•Apr 7, 2026
are you aware that the Metro in Paris has trains with rubber wheels?
IshKebab•Apr 7, 2026
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.
personalityson•Apr 7, 2026
Never been to London, 3 out of 9 correct.
Markoff•Apr 7, 2026
I'd like this for subway escalator sounds, I loved one somewhere in Prague city center which made exactly Sicario soundtrack rhytm.
dole•Apr 7, 2026
As a Yank, first thought that came to mind was using geolocation by mains hum because you can.
jdsnape•Apr 7, 2026
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
CamouflagedKiwi•Apr 7, 2026
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.
vishkk•Apr 7, 2026
Pretty cool —- should do it for NYC subways!
abrugsch•Apr 7, 2026
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.)
tialaramex•Apr 7, 2026
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.
SoftTalker•Apr 7, 2026
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.
hobofan•Apr 7, 2026
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.
Hah, I just thought of this randomly the other day that London metro lines have such distinct soundscapes.
player_piano•Apr 7, 2026
Oh Northern line, I would recognize that ear-splitting screech anywhere.
totalmarkdown•Apr 7, 2026
haha - brilliant. did you use elevenlabs to generate the sounds?
joshuafuller•Apr 7, 2026
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.
tgulacsi•Apr 7, 2026
5/9 - I've never been in London and never heard these sounds before :)
tremarley•Apr 7, 2026
I got 7/9
dmd•Apr 7, 2026
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.
Havoc•Apr 7, 2026
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.
allegretto•Apr 7, 2026
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.
basisword•Apr 7, 2026
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).
virtyaluk•Apr 7, 2026
Got the Northern and Jubilee right as I use them the most.
KaiserPro•Apr 7, 2026
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.
29 Comments
I got 5/9 on the Tube Sound Quiz!
(better than random!)
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.
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.
After being in Paris over the weekend the state of the underground cleanliness/noise is just absolutely shameful.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
[0]: http://mta.me
Most people on the tube have headphones in anyway tbh.
«The screeches in the audio are not that bad, it can’t be the Northern» was my thinking.