passengers on board in joy, The scene looked such amazing
.
Bit of flashback: Started my journey from Kalyan in that 12:31 12 Car CSTM Fast and reached Kurla around 13:15 what happened in the mean time was very much usual
.
Soon my co-passenger and admin friend Nadeem aka ThE KiNg reached Kurla along with one of our member Mahesh Mishra who too wanted a glimpse of the newbie, btw met him for the first time
.
Without wasting much time we proceeded to LTT and reached there in about 10 mins where the super shining brand new LHB Rake was waiting for us on the PF #1, First expression on looking at the rake was simply WOW!
.
Now time to check the loco where a large gathering of high officials/TTE's/LP's was seen, Loco as mentioned earlier was KYN WCAM-3 #21890
The officials did some rituals by lighting the incense sticks and placing it on the loco and also breaking a coconut on the loco :)
.
A bit later we started the mission of snapping the rake in every possible way, TTE's too were bowled by the beauty of the rake that they could not control themselves and clicked few pics with the rake, The atmosphere was electric and even RPF's did not mind much considering the occasion
.
Coming back to present: The WCAM-3 started gathering speed after negotiating the speed restrictions and joined the 5th line soon we crossed Vidyavihar and Ghatkopar and after Kanjur the WCAM unleashed its fury by ripping across Bhandup/Nahur as we overtook the KYN Fast on a parallel run but controllers had something else planned for us as we had to slow down and KYN Fast again overtook us in a parallel run and we had to trail that Fast local all the way till Kalyan after joining the 3rd line near Mulund
.
Crossed Thane/Parsik Tunnel/Diva at moderate speeds as we never got that chance to gain high speeds, Soon we entered Kalyan which was crossed with restricted speeds of under 25, Even beyond Kalyan we did not attain much higher speeds as we were trailing another Asangaon bound local
.
So all the suburban stations crossed at moderate speeds and only after Asangaon did we attain some respectable speeds, At around Khadavli saw one railfan from SLB who was shooting a video standing under an umbrella, Such is the level of excitement/enthusiasm this train train has managed to create in the minds of RF's
.
Crossed Oombermali where that derailed coach of an EMU is still lying around, reached Kasara where our train took around 8 minutes to get the KYN WAG-7 bankers attached before proceeding up the hill, In the meantime we managed to click many snaps
.
The Thull Ghats were just amazing with fog/greenery all around, Reached IGP shortly where the much awaited moment of the day was about to be witnessed by us, We left the train in a jiffy and proceeded ahead on the PF #1 to witness the loco change ceremony
.
The KYN WCAM-3 was detached very soon and a WAP-4 was atnding at far end on the other line, We thought it would be from BSL, The WCAM-3 vacated the line and WAP-4 proceeded towards our train when we realised it was from ET (an
#offlink as we would like to say it)
.
Another set of snaps clicked despite the warning of RPF action :P
Loco change took around 15 mins,
Some observations at IGP: 12534 Pushpak with a KYN WCAM-3 and 2 KYN WAG-7's in the lead to act as brakers
GHY-LTT was to arrive soon
PUNE-BSL came with KYN WCAM-3 #21954 on adjacent PF
.
We left IGP ahead of PUNE-BSL and the run upto Nasik was not much interesting and reached Nasik at dot 18:00 hrs late by 30 mins and there came an end to the wonderful journey which i shall cherish for long time :)
.
Reservation/Charting: 1AC saw only 1 booking from LTT-JHS, 2AC and 3AC had people boarding/deboarding at all stations enroute, Even mine berth had allotment from JHS-NZM and Nadeem's berth had allotment from NK-NZM
.
This train will be a boon for UP passengers and will be a sure-shot success considering it has a very big market apart from the end-to-end passengers, "Only thing is that it deserves an halt at Kalyan which would make it all the more Perfect" ( as said by a NZM bound passenger)...
.
This report is return in a hurry, few points are bound to be missed and surely there would be some mistakes! Your comments/criticism is most welcome,
I hope you would have enjoyed it and sorry for making it too long... :)
