When Leonard Bernstein wrote the tune to “Somewhere” for West Side Story, the dummy lyric “There goes whatshisname” stood in place until Stephen Sondheim came up with “There’s a place for us.” So says, or actually sings, daughter Jamie Bernstein in a N.Y. Times piece about the No. 2 train of the New York subway which emits the 3 notes that start off the lyric. More specifically, the inverters that convert the third rail’s direct current into alternating current on the train cause the steel to sing out the ascending minor seventh and the descending half-step that make up that bit of the tune. From the Times article that originally investigated the phenomenon back in 2002: “The direct current from the third rail is converted aboard the train to alternating current, and in the process, a catchy tune is unwittingly sung.”