♥♥ Matsyagandha Express ♥♥
Thane - Kumta
This was my second trip on konkan, but this time it was the matsyagandha exp ( previous one was during March in the our own Rocket!! ). Due to some sudden plans ,we had landed up to RAC 13,14,15 which as usual confirmed up and during the journey many seats were still vaccant. Comming back to the story, it was 3rd of october.We packed our bags and left our home quite early around 12 as we had to traverse almost whole of Mumbai to...
more... reach TNA from our northern most suburb in Western line. Reached TNA around 2:30. As scheduled "the Mighty Matsyagandha" was to arrive by 15:45 on pf #7. Meanwhile CST-MAS arrived on pf #5 and surprisingly had most of the coaches 2014-15 made brand new ones. LTT-Manmad, Sewagram made their ways through the busy station. Time passed by and I was getting excited. Finally announcements went on for 12619 and the typical CR Mumbai division's coach position anouncement in all the three languages went on. I didn't still get the reason behind these annoncements when the indicators work well throughout the stretch of Mumbai division( though it is pleasant to a railfan like me :p ). Among the various announcements, horns, accelarating sounds of the siemens beauty, I finally heard the hummimg pleasent sound and a ED WDP4D appeared up dancing with the 23 coaches load. As usual majority of the coaches were old, rusty. Ours was S9, a 2002 made one with rusty look outside and decent(adjustable) cleanliness inside. Konark with the usual new link of an EMD blasted through pf#5. And the journey to the "always overhyped" :v :p (regarding beauty+railfanning) Konkan railway started. Well why overhyped as per me ? because I used to think KR gives something like the typical ghat section views throughout the stretch which didn’t turn up much true .Its just "okay" with usual surroundings except for the tunnels, bridges and few viaducts. Or is it that the stretch from Chiplun to Madgaon is such? Beacause in both the trips I didn't witness this stretch. And moreover , again just for me, Konkan railway stretch seems a kind of lonely place, with stations situated far away from towns, platforms with least shelters and together with almost empty stations enroute. I was getting a kind of sick till Khed witnessing the so unhappening places. As it was still the monsoon timetable, the train hardly had hit mps throughout the journey with many slowdowns and just average speed. The first time it was looped down was at Mangaon ( with its scheduled stoppage ) and were made to wait almost 25 mins for the late running TVC-NZM rajdhani. And thereafter continued the saga of crossings reaching chiplun almost 1.5-2 hours late.Stopped for more than 15 mins and finally departed around 22:20. Meanwhile I settled myself on my lower berth slipped to sleep cancelling the alarms :p as I was pretty sure it won't cover up much delay and may be it might get much more delayed ahead and finally reach kumta after 6:30 itself. Which turned true and we landed into kumta platform at 07:10 with almost 2+ hours delay.
Ratings :
Cleanliness :3.5/5 things have turned better now or else i would have rated 1.5 or 2 if a year back )
Speed : 2/5 Crawled throughout the stretch with many crossings might be this itself is the saga of monsoon period in KR.
Food : 3/5 Nothing much on this lonely stretch. Dinner is as usual loaded at Khed except that , we may expect for some snacks at Mangaon or chiplun station.
Railfanning : 2/5 Now that depends on person to person and for me it was literally boring.
Punctuality : 1/5 :p Sorry KR and KR fans ........ monsoon period in KR sucks
