How do you pronounce 0

[Bruce Kelly]

BNSF's Hauser Yard in north Idaho has what is routinely referred to as "Aught Track." It was installed some years ago as a scale track to weigh export-bound grain trains in motion. Because it was added on the north side of the existing Yard Track 1, the scale track (as it is sometimes still called) was designated Track 0, more commonly called "Aught Track" on the radio.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aught

Scroll down to the noun defintion.

[SD70Dude]

Miningman

In Canada it's ...X, Y,  Zed

In the US it's ....X, Y,  Zee (you guys are weird)

Fixed it for you.

On CN were are required to pronounce the character "0" as "naught" in radio communications with the RTC.

[Deggesty]

Overmod

 No one I ever met in the United States said 'zed'.  That's a Britannicism seen in other ex-Dominions like Oz or EnZed.  It's 'ex,wye,zee' here and long may it stay so; let the French keep their ygrec and such.

And where I come from, Chesterfield is a coat.  And within my living memory people also called that article of furniture a 'divan' or 'davenport' -- more regional fun.

 

Even though I have never seen anyone wearing one, I thought of a coat, also.

I understand that W.C. Fields, when his radio program was sponsored by the American Tobacco Company, spoke of his son Chester while on the air.

Now, back to railroad matters.

[Firelock76]

Here's the military usage...

The numeral 0 is always pronounced "zero."  And that old training is hard to break, let me tell you!  If someone asks me for my phone number I always give it as  "Area code XzeroX-XXzero-XzeroXX." 

The letter O is called "Oscar" in radio or telephone communications, it's from the international phonetic alphabet.

That being said, it's not a mortal sin if anyone calls a steam locomotive with a 4-4-0 wheel arrangement a "four-four-oh."

And no, no-one here in the US calls the letter Z "zed," it's the Brits who do that, and possibly others within the Commonwealth.

[Overmod]

 No one I ever met in the United States said 'zed'.  That's a Britannicism seen in other ex-Dominions like Oz or EnZed.  It's 'ex,wye,zee' here and long may it stay so; let the French keep their ygrec and such.

And where I come from, Chesterfield is a coat.  And within my living memory people also called that article of furniture a 'divan' or 'davenport' -- more regional fun.

[Miningman]

In Canada it's ...X, Y,  Zee

In the US it's ....X, Y,  Zed 

But you do say Zee-ro.  And Zee-bra

4-4-Zero.  What the heck is that, nutty.

Some of the old Brits say naught and ought for zero. 

We do however say Chesterfield and you say Sofa or Couch.

For you folks Chesterfield is a smoke.

[Overmod]

I have never used anything but "oh" in Whyte coding, and never heard any other thing in my experience.  (For the docent: how would he pronounce the year "1906" or the locomotive number "4501"?)   Someone can check the link I posted to the original discussion of the Whyte system to see if there is any pronunciation convention in the language there.

"Ought" or it's close relative "nought" do factor in, but use is largely archaic now, the great exception being a certain rifle caliber.

This may be an example of semantic convention, like why we have nothing but disc brakes and disk drives.

[ORNHOO]

I once visited the steam shop of the Sierra Railroad in Jamestown, CA. Looking at a 4-4-0 I described it as a "four-four-oh"; the docent pointed out that "oh" is a letter, and wheel arangements are described with numerals: "four-four-zero". This, in turn, reminded me that my father (born in 1914) always called "0" "Aught". So, iback in the day, what was the acceptable pronunciation  of the missing trailing truck?