[kmorg]

Unfortunately JR East has phasing out the custom melodies and have been standardizing the Yamanote line to always play the same tune. They are saying labor shortages are the reason since they need to press a physical button in the station in order to play the melody.

[cbhl]

Huh.

https://kaisercougarconnection.com/2784/news/musical-trains-...

My impression is that all of the Yamanote line stations are above ground -- I'd have expected it to be possible to have "one button plays the right sound at each station" if you used a standard phone's GPS to figure out which station you were at.

[numpad0]

Commuter trains always knows where they are by various means. Braking distances for trains is airplane scaled, and so knowing where they are programmatically with accuracy on both trains and at central control stations is important for safety.

[iggldiggl]

That's not actually true. True, with computerised technology it might be more convenient to implement it that way and it also allows some additional optimisations and bonus features, but it's not an absolute requirement.

At a minimum that's acceptable enough even by modern-ish safety standards, the signalling system only needs to know which sections of track are occupied and which are free, and it only needs to know that at the granularity of individual block sections between subsequent signals. It also doesn't necessarily need to know about the identity of the train, even though in practice you'll want to track that, too, for the convenience of the signallers.

The train in turn doesn't need to know where exactly it is – in terms of safety, it's enough knowing the local speed limit and the state of any upcoming signals, but for that, it doesn't need to know where it is in relation to the outside world. The classic implementation is simply fixed trackside infrastructure telling the onboard safety systems all they need to know.

Historically, any demands for knowing where the train is exactly in relation to the outside world were rather driven by automated passenger information systems and the like rather than the safety-critical parts of the signalling system.

[justsomehnguy]

> GPS

Kids these days...

Not only you don't need a GNSS to determine a fixed in place railroad station but actually you don't want to use a GNSS to do that.

A simple radio beacon working on ~400MHz is more than enough to solve this difficult technical obstacle.

Of course, this is totally ignoring what the trains do already know where they are because they need to display the current/next stations on the passenger information displays.

[kmorg]

Its most likely not worth it to JR East to support it anymore since they have had a labor shortage recently.

[numpad0]

These songs were composed by whoever available at equipment manufacturers, and copyright statuses were a bit of a mess. Now that the songs had become no small part of their branding and JRE would want to use them as they please, they're vertically integrating the process.

[jrockway]

I think it's pretty obvious that the goal is to get rid of the conductor position entirely. 50% less employees per train. Someone who sits at a desk all day definitely gets promoted for that one.

[bapak]

Huh? What does that even mean? The train already announces the train station name, so why does it need a specific button for the specific jingle? Does not sound right.

[kmorg]

Its not an automated operation, the train jingles play a few seconds before the conductor closes the door. Its played at different times depending on congestion on the train platform.

[bapak]

Right, but the train knows where it is. The screen shows it. Why is the jingle not connected to the same system as the train's screens? Everything is on the screen, even the doors closing animation. No excuse, really.