class="reversehighlighted">Uttam

While admittedly, this train stops at a lot of station en route, there is one redeeming factor about this train.
You can complete your day's work in Bombay and board this train (choose an upper berth) late at night and immediately go to sleep.
When you wake up, you are in Kurduwadi which has great omlettes and veg breakfast. Your lunch is at Wadi and dinner is at Guntakal which has the best Chicken Biryani I have ever tasted in any NV Refreshment Room on Indian Railways.
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to sleep, fully satisfied and wake up in Madras.
Advantage?
Complete your day's work and board the 1028 similarly and come back to Bombay.
NO HOTEL EXPENSES in Madras if you have a day's work. If you have longer, once again hotel expenses reduced by at least one night.
Travel in comfort if you like in 2A and you won't have to endue the beggars, dirty toilets etc which others seem to get irritated about.
I love this train!
Uttam

class="reversehighlighted">Uttam

I travelled by this train on November 28 from NZM to KCG in 1A.
The train arrived in the platform at 645 even though the departure time was itself 645 am. We pulled out at 712 am.
In spite of being a non-stop train upto Jhansi, the train did make many unscheduled stops at large (AGC, MTJ, GWL) and small stations (Sholaka).
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train did NOT gain time over its nearly 24 hour journey to KCG and was was 1 hour late arriving in KCG.
The train was not too full and there was at least one passenger who purchased a reservation inside the train in our 1A Cabin. There were not too many unauthorized passengers in it and we did not experience any Chain Pulling.
This was my first train journey in more than 10 years - I live outside India - I was looking forward to it, being a rail fan!
I must admit that this journey was nothing spectacular or memorable - frankly it was a little boring.
Cheers!
Uttam