What has the state of engineering come to when a simple coil solenoid and a
'capacitor-discharge unit' (gong enhancer, yes there is a little DIN
mounted box in the Variotram labelled 'gong enhancer') controlled by a
simple push button that applies 24v to the circuit has to be replaced with
a speaker, amplifier and an MP3 player because it's 'simpler to maintain'?

A handful of electronic components (the solenoid and the capacitor unit to
'enhance' the strike of the solenoid) are replaced with a microcontroller
(with embedded software) and many dozens of components that make up the MP3
player (the sound source gong) and the power amplifier for the speaker.

The chip manufacturers must love this. Actually, there are massive
shortages of all sorts of high tech parts at the moment. The entire
industry relies on low-cost labour in predominately Asian countries for
fabricating chips and other components. These regions are now ravaged
(again) by COVID.

Look forward to trams off the road because the gong player has failed and
the distributer cant get any microprocessor modules in.

On Fri, 16 Jul 2021 at 12:24, Yuri Sos trams4me@...> wrote:

> Yarra Trams is replacing bells with electronic gongs.

>

> Yuri.

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