This is a reskin of the E231-500 Series made by Rizky_Adiputra and avaible on his website (jirctrainz.com).
All the necessary dependencies are included in this .rar, included in the original content’s package or avaible on the DLS.
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An instant icon…
By the early ‘2000s JR East was looking to replace the older JNR-designed 205 Series trains on busy Yamanote Line services, wich depsite being adequate, were an older JNR design from the mid-1980s, designed especially to be cheap and easy to manufacture and run.
Introduced in 2002, the E231-500 Series was an improved version of JR East’s higly successful and brand-new E231 design, specifically designed for Yamanote Line services. They entered service in April 2002, and by 2005 a total of 52 11-car sets was manufactured by Kawasaki and Tokyu Car Co. The Yamanote Line 205 Series trains were fully retired by April 2005, with the last run on April 17th, almost exactly three years after the introduction of the E231-500s.
The replacement of the 205 Series with E231-500s also made possible the conversion of the line’s ATC signalling from the older JNR-designed ATC-6 analogue type to the more modern D-ATC (“Digital ATC”), activated in 2006.
Originally delivered with two “six-door cars” per set, these were later replaced by conventional 4-door cars derived from the E233 series design starting from August 2010 and ending by February 2011; this was made so that platform-screen doors could be installed on the Yamanote Line and Keihin-Tohoku Lines (occasionally, due to works on the line, Keihin-Tohoku Line trains may run on sections of the Yamanote Line and vice-versa).
As they were the brand new (and also due to their simple but likeable design), they quickly became an icon of the Yamanote Line and of Tokyo’s railways as well, being fetaured in countless anime, manga and movies (foreigin too), but this period of fame wasn’t to last long…
…and an unexpected turn of events…
Designed especially for the 2020 Olympics, starting from 2015, the newer E235 Series trains were introduced on the Yamanote Line. Derived from the E233 Series design, they were an upgraded version of the latter, and they were intended to replace the E231-500 Series on Yamanote Line services by the time of the start of Olympics themselves.
It might seem strange to replace what was almost brand-new (some sets even were less than 10 years old!), but to put it simply, E231-500 Series trains weren’t to be scrapped: they were to be re-assigned to the Chuo-Sobu Line, displacing the E231-0s and 209-500s wich themselves too were designed to be transferred on outlying, less-crowded lines still operated with JNR-designed stock (205 Series at 99%); thus the aim of the E235 was to indirectly replace the remaining 205s in the Tokyo Area (and to upgrade the image of Tokyo’s most important railway line in time for the 2020 Olympics).
After a series of inital troubles, full E235 Series trains started to be delivered from mid-2016 onwards, displacing all the remaining E231-500 Series trains to the Chuo-Sobu Line.
The iconic lime-green E231-500 Series trains ran for the last time on the Yamanote Line on the 20th of January 2020.
Bonus picture: an example of the “Chain-Replacement” system currently employed by JR East.
