Railways and the Urban Soundscape: Montreal, 1850s–1950s

Abstract

Recent work on the history of railways has focused on the ways in which they changed the experience of space. Studies of urban settings have examined the role of railway tracks in delineating and reaffirming identities of class and ethnicity; they have also looked at the housing and neighborhoods that grew up around railway yards. This article contributes to the literature on railways and urban space by exploring the meanings of train sounds, in particular those produced by bells and steam whistles, in Montreal. The sounds made by trains were among the loudest to arrive in the 19th-century world, and had a particularly dramatic impact upon urban areas. Train whistles and bells had diverse meanings, depending on the precise moment and place at which they were sounded, the duration of the sound, and who was listening. These meanings were integrated into various forms of urban knowledge, and constituted one element of what historian David Garrioch calls “a semiotic system,” part of a larger “urban information system.” This article explores the confrontation between two interpretations of the sounds made by train bells and steam whistles in the region of Montreal between 1850 and 1950, namely, the conflicts between those who saw bells and whistles as elements of a language of safety for railway workers and city dwellers, on the one hand, and, on the other, those who increasingly viewed them as an unwelcome source of urban noise.