The weirdest difference is the sound of the trains. British train horns have a surging sound. It’s the sound of a hundred and eighty five tons of metal hurling itself towards the future. It’s a lie, but it’s a bright one. Here we come. We’re good at this. We leap into the future at a hundred and twenty five miles an hour.
American train horns are so different. I’d lay in bed at night and listen to them lowing, down by the river. American trains mourn. Their horns are haunting, especially in the dark. There’s a funereal yearning to them. It’s a distant sonic truth. It may be the real sound of the American landscape.