A Timeless Journey

Minutes, hours, even days, timetables, all these have no meaning when one travels by a train across the northern parts of India.
Notes from a journey from Kanpur to Pune.

1) Reached Kanpur station early in the morning to catch the weekly Lucknow-Pune superfast on Sunday.
The day started with a darshan of the Gomti Express coming from Delhi, going towards Lucknow at 6:30 am. Now, what was a fully sitting train doing traveling overnight, and that too on a Sunday on which it is not supposed to run? Well, it was just 9 hours late (in a 7 hour journey), that too on a double electrified section. Well, this was just the starting of a lot of exiting observations to come, which unfortunately did not seem so exciting when it came to my own train.

2) 7:50 am came and went but there was no sign of my right-time running train on platform 2.
The reason were the other 3 trains all ready to race each other out towards Jhansi (someone in this group was desirous of a railway F1 version, I had heard). These were:
2.1) Barauni-Gwalior, late by 23 hours. The only consolation to the doomed passengers would have been the shining bright WDM3D 11130 being wasted on the train, had there been any passengers remaining by this time. This was waiting for the Gorakhpur-Bangalore to move, which had already been given the starter signal.
2.2) Gorakhpur-Bangalore, late by 19 hours. When this superfast did actually finally move, after a few centimeters, someone probably with a good sense of humour promptly pulled the chain and brought it to a halt once again.
2.3) Gorakhpur-LTT, late by only around 6 hours.
Of course, all these old and esteemed trains had to be given priority over our young maiden which had just originated from Lucknow an hour back.

3) 2104 LJN-PUNE ‘superfast’ finally arrived 1.5 hours late and then spent another 1.5 hours at the platform waiting for the Jhansi-Lucknow passenger to arrive at Kanpur station from the opposite direction. 2104 was led by a magestic green PUNE WDM2 which was to have taken the train all the way till Pune.

4) On the way to Jhansi, we crossed a Bangalore-Gorakhpur rake. I presume it must have been that of the 0502 Holiday Special, running around 30 hours late (since the other SBC-GKP train on this route, the regular 2592 running late by 96 hours seemed a bit too much). Not very surprising, considering that they had decided to provide a single WDM2a the honours to lead the 23 coach train!

5) The mind spinning with all the strange encounters, and the 40 deg. Celcius winds in the SL class, and the fact that I had not slept the last 4 nights ensured that I became a dead-body in my side-upper berth for the next 18 hours flat. When I woke up near Manmad and peeped out, our train was led by an orange engine, it seemed. Closer observation revealed a bright orange Bhagat-ki-koti WDM3a, with a dead green Pune WDM2 quietly trailing it! The Pune loco was dumped during the reversal at Daund. The train was 5 hours late now. I went and checked out the BGKT WDM3a prior to its departure at Daund. Inside the loco cab, sitting on the assistant’s seat was a young girl, around 13 years of age, wearing a black frock on a dark body, having two cute ponytails. The starter turned amber, the loco gave a loud horn and the train started moving, I went back to my seat, regretting the decision taken in younger days of not becoming a loco pilot in favour of other opportunities elsewhere….