The Queen is coming?

[CHamilton]

A friend posted this on Facebook:

Just learned that trains whistle Morse code for Q when approaching a crossroad, a tradition started by the British navy to say the Queen's coming.

Really? I've never heard that before. But I found a similar story at this website.

This dates back to when the Queen of England would come into harbor aboard ships. The ship would blast their horn the letter "Q" to let everyone know the Queen of England was on board and to yield the right of way to it. Trains adopted this signal for everyone to yield to it.

The whole story sounds bogus to me; I haven't found anything in more reliable sources. Anyone have ideas?

More discussion here.

 

[trainman74]

So, what, did ships use "K" instead from 1901 to 1952?

I've never heard this story, and I think it's completely coincidental that the whistle sequence for a grade crossing happens to be the same as the Morse Code for "Q."

 

[George Harris]

So, what, did ships use "K" instead from 1901 to 1952?

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Same logic as those the wanted to claim that 9-11 was selected as the date for the twin towers crash because the emergency number is 911. the main porblem with that is that 911 is not world wide, and neither is the date order mm/dd/yy. In fact, 911 is in few places outside the US and Canada. It is 999 in Western Europe, and 112 in quite a few other places. Outside the US, the favored date order is dd/mm/yy in much of the word, and yy/mm/dd in other parts.

I am much more inclinded that it happened when they managed to get their act together and the date was incidental.