My Interesting train Journeys - 1
It was January 2019, and me and my friends decided to go on a trip to Hampi. We are from Chennai, and at that time 17314 was not introduced and we did not have a direct connection, and we had to reach HPT in a chain connection in two trains.
We...
more... first thought of taking 17651 + 17415 (Kacheguda + Haripriya) combo which will give us a 90 minute slack at RU, which should be comfortable. This plan was soon dropped as we many of us can not catch Kacheguda express around 17:00 due to office timings. Everyone preferred a night journey after office. This is where the railfan in me got activated. Planning routes and finding chains is a fun activity in its own. While everyone would prefer a chain of atleast 60 minutes, my chain version had a slack of minus 60 minutes. That is, my chain train would arrive at the xfer station one hour before my first train reaches there. When I told this to my friends they thought I was joking. But we still managed to comfortably reach HPT with no delay. Plus 5 points to you if you already found how I did this. This is how
The first connecting train was 19419 - MAS ADI Express. A comfortable LHB jounrney of 8 hours till Guntakal gave us enough sleep. We reached GTL at 4:00 in the morning, around 20 minutes BT. Our chain train is 17603 KCG-UBL Express, that reached GTL at 3:30 itself, but will not depart until 5:40 until Amaravati express arives. I never had an experience like this before. As we were slowly entering GTL, I immediatly started looking at all platforms for our train, but it was not there. As we slowly entered GTL, I saw the TB of tiny rake of KCG UBL express. To our surprise it was not on a platform and was parked in-between two platforms without any engine. The fans were running and everyone were sleeping inside.
We did not want to wait any longer, so we jumped the tracks and boarded the single sleeper coach train that we booked. Went to our seats and dozed of immedietly. We did not wake up until we reached Tornagallu and even the TTE did not come to check our tickets. We reached HPT around 8:30 AM, making our travel time from MAS and HPT around 12 hours. A comfortable journey and a different journey in its own.
Guess how we took the return journey back to home. (Everyone has to go to office, so we had to reach early)
Thanks for reading. I have a lot of interesting journeys that I wanted to share with you!
