Need Assistance With Tōkaidō-Shōnan E231

[ATShinkansen]

I recently purchased the 5-car add-on to complete my Kato Tōkaidō-Shōnan E231 train.  I’m looking over the decal sheets for this train and need clarification on decal usage between the 10-car and 5-car sets.  If both trains run as a single set, would I use the same set from each column (front destination, side destination, and train number) throughout, or would they be labeled differently according to where each set will terminate after splitting?

[Kamome]

My experience with them has always been the whole 15 cars had shown the same destination at least as far as I travelled on it.

 

As it’s a model, if you plan on running them separately perhaps it would be nice to have 2 different destinations.

[ATShinkansen]

The plan is to run the full 15 car train at shows and run them separately at home (with the ten-car set most likely reduced to six).  I’m looking at using the Tōkaidō Line front destination boards, possibly the Tōkaidō Ito Line ones for the five-car set if it’s appropriate.  (Most of the other front destination boards are too small for Google Translate to pick up.)  Would the train number decals also be identical when they’ running together?  They look like they have more to do with the services the trains run and appear to be different from the road numbers of the trains themselves.

[bill937ca]

Wikipedia gives information on numbering:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E231_series

[ATShinkansen]

I did look at that page and found the road numbers printed on the end cars.  The numbers on the decal sheet are a different numbering system.

 

It appears, after mapping out the lines on Google Earth, familiarizing myself with the stations, and going over the E231/Shōnan-Shinjuku Wikipedia articles several times, that the five-car sets pretty much stay with the ten-car ones the entire trip.  The lines that run five-car sets on their own don’t seem to match up with the points on the routes where the two sets separate (at which point the five-car set seems to simply be removed and does not go elsewhere).  Therefore, it seems to make the most sense to me to label both sets identically.

[railsquid]

I haven't looked into this in great detail, but happened to have a few minutes to spare at Ueno today so spent a little bit of time observing the 15 car sets (E231s and E233s) as they came through.

 

Firstly, all displays are digital, and alternate between route/line and final destination.

 

Each set displays the station it will terminate at, so with the example of a 15 car train heading to Kōzu via Tokyo, with the rear 5 car set terminating early at Hiratsuka, the lead 10 cars were displaying "Ueno-Tokyo Line/Kōzu" (front and side panels) and the rear 5 cars "Ueno-Tokyo Line/Hiratsuka".

 

The intermediate cabs had their displays switched off.

 

AFAIK on all these routes with 10/5 car sets, one part of the set terminates early (or is added later) to remove/provide additionaly capacity as the train goes away from/approaches Tokyo. I don't think there are any which split to go to different destinations, might be wrong though.