TIL the Swiss Federal Railways uses vibraphone melodies in announcements based on its Swiss national language acronyms: SBB (E♭-B♭-B♭) German, CFF (C-F-F) French and FFS (F-F-E♭) Italian. The tune and language vary by canton or country the train is in.

by BezugssystemCH1903

7 comments

  1. More detailed explanation:

    >Since 2002, SBB has used music in train announcements. The notes in the music correspond to the acronyms SBB CFF FFS, transposed by means of the German notes “Es – B – B” (E♭, B♭, B♭), “C – F – F” (C, F, F) and “F – F – Es” (F, F, E♭). For the German acronym, as there is no “S” note, the “Es” was used. And for the last letter, it is the B♭/G♭ chord that is played. The melody is played on a vibraphone.[29] The melody played depends on which canton (or country onboard international services) the station or train is located in, and manual announcements play the three-language melody in the file above.

    [Audio Sound](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SBB_Historic_-_AV_TON_1416-04_-_Tonfolge_SBB_-_Ausschnitt_aus_Radiospot_neuer_Fahrplan.wav)

  2. in the sbb app, make an impossible connection, like Züri HB -> Züri HB, an error message with a picture of a train attendant comes up, harrass them with a bunch of taps, and boom, you get a jumping game

    that game has a music i haven’t heard anywhere else, it features all three sbb cff ffs jingles sequenced into one tune

  3. Holy shit I never noticed they were different but now it’s obvious.

  5. Wrong except for FFS. CFF and SBB have an other note for the last one than F and B respectively, don’t remember which ones they are exactly, but it’s not hard to hear the difference between the 2nd and 3rd note

  6. Can you explain to me how you claim this is the case when the second and third notes are never the same, despite the second and third letters being the same in both SBB and CFF?

  7. Then why do I always hear three different tones? No matter if I’m in the French or German speaking section…

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