More than ambient noise, train chimes can also tell a nation's story

Try riding a train, and – instead of cancelling out the noise with a pair of earbuds – listen carefully to the tunes, chimes and jingles it makes as its doors open and close, and as it approaches and leaves a station.

- Raul Dancel

What is one way to get a feel for a nation’s soul?

“I think the appeal is the simplicity,” Mr Ted Green, a civil engineer, said in a 2021 New York Times article about his hobby: collecting the sounds and sights of transit systems.

“You wonder, how can there be so many different variations of beeps? And then you listen, and they’re all so different.”

Many nations reflect their history and culture in the melodic musical prompts, and in the beeps and pings they use as signalling tools in their railways.

In Rio de Janeiro, for instance, the “next stop” prompt is introduced by a “ding-dong” that sounds like a homage to bossa nova.

Others use the chimes and music as a showcase of their technological edge, to help soothe a usually stressful travelling experience, or to just flex some branding muscle.

In Montreal, the metro’s door-closing chime came out of a collective attachment to an accident of mechanical acoustics.

The metro’s first trains, rolled out in 1966, made a noise that sounded like the first three notes of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare For The Common Man. The noise came from converters that worked to slow down the electronic frequency applied to the motor.

When the transit authority wanted to add a door-closing chime in 2005, none was as popular as a chime that mimicked this mechanical sound. So executives added a synthetic “doo-doo-doo”.