Voice of the tram: Colin Tyrus

Meet the man who voices Melbourne’s trams

IF YOU’RE A frequent tram traveller, you’ll be familiar with the warm and perfectly enunciated voice that announces Melbourne’s numerous tram stops. This voice belongs to Colin Tyrus, a retired Yarra Trams employee and news journalist.

Colin, when and how did Yarra Trams choose you to do the recordings?

I was communications manager at Yarra Trams and started that role in 2004. The first recordings I did were for the City Circle trams, the free tourist trams. I recorded that in a mate’s recording studio and then later on, some years later, when the technology had improved and advanced to the stage when we could do automated announcements on the rest of the fleet, I progressively recorded the routes. There are over 1,600 tram stops, so by the time you do all the different variations and record them, several times each, it’s quite a lot of work. One of the biggest challenges was to get the pronunciations correct.

Do you remember any stop names that were hard to pronounce?

Oh, there’s one called ‘Ievers Street’. It’s spelt ‘Ievers’ but I think pronounced ‘evers’. Then, of course, there’s always the debate in Melbourne over whether you pronounce the ‘t’ in Swanston Street. Well, you do... I’ve checked.

Are you still working with Yarra Trams?

I’m a retiree now. I retired from full-time work three and a half years ago and am now involved in community radio at a couple of stations.

Do you love or hate hearing yourself on the trams?

Put it this way... I always get a surprise when

I get on and I hear myself. I suppose you never quite get used to the sound of your own voice [ laughs]. I’ve read about a million news bulletins and I always think to myself, “Gee, every day now I have more listeners than I ever had when I was on radio reading the breakfast news.” Rebecca Russo