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Brooklyn hockey team now using subway horns
While many minor-league hockey teams use locomotive horns, most NHL teams use either custom-designed units for their goal horns or the very loud, low-pitched horns off a ship. Only the Ottawa Senators, IIRC, used a locomotive horn prior to this, which according to their website came off of a retired VIA Rail unit.
The transit connection with athletic teams in Brooklyn goes back a long way: the Brooklyn Dodgers were originally the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers.
According to press reports, this didn’t go over well. Greg Wyshynski, who covers hockey for Yahoo Sports, compared it to “a mosquito blowing into a party favor.” The Islanders will have the horn from their old arena installed by the opening game of the season. Sorry MTA!
Yup, one of my Islander fan friends was rather dismissive of the gesture: "Except there was such a tirade over the wimpy sounding horn, it was replaced by the (old) horn from the Coliseum… " Maybe they shoulda used an airhorn off a Long Island Railroad Geep! (The LIRR Atlantic Avenue Terminal is right underneath the Barclays Center).
Ed Clopton - The team now known as the Dodgers were never called the Trolley Dodgers. They were originally the Brooklyn Atlantics, then the Grays, then the Bridegrooms, then the Grooms, then the Bridegrooms again, then the Superbas before finally being called the Dodgers for the first time in 1911-12. They then went back to Superbas for one season before becoming the Robins and then finally settling on Dodgers for good in 1932.
The Trolley Dodgers appellation was applied to their fans and Brooklynites in general by the sophisticates in Manhattan in the 19th century. Sort of the urban equivalent of calling someone from the country a hick I guess.