Trip Report of an uneventful journey:
Without having anything to do on a lazy holiday morning, I set out to YPR today to fulfil one of my long-cherished dream of travelling in a Rail Bus. Earlier my idea of travelling the Rail Bus that was running between BWT and KQZ fell through when the Rail Bus was replaced by DEMU coaches. I was all too excited with a recent report in ‘Bangalore Mirror’ about this little bus running on tracks between YPR and NMGA. click here
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enquiry with PRS clerk, while buying a ticket to NMGA, confirmed that the ‘train’ is departing from PF-1. The empty rake of 12292 was slowly being taken out of PF-2 for arrival for HWH-YPR SF Express. Since I was not able to see anything in most part of tracks on PF-1, I walked further towards the end of PF-1 and there it was the little Rail Bus, with the engines running and LP and ALP in their positions, all set to depart.
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As expected, 12863 arrived at PF-2 around 7.35 and soon after the Rail Bus was given starter signal. There were just about 10 passengers of the a total seating capacity of 71. After sometime, the Bus accelerated and attained a decent speed of about 60-70 (I am not very good at calculating the speed while travelling on/in a vehicle, also I don’t know about the MPS of a Rail Bus). The sound at the time of acceleration was very loud, but not deafening. It might render the sound of your mobiles ringing inaudible, during acceleration. Also, the passenger could feel the jerk and swaying to sides more in a Rail Bus than a regular coach of a train, I felt.
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Soon, it entered PF-2 on BAW. On PF-1 was the empty rake of 16569. Of all the passengers, 5 got down and only 1 passenger boarded from here. Later at SDVL, though one passenger, who seemed to be a regular traveller with whom LP seemed friendly, wanted to get down at SDVL, LP asked her to wait and slowed down the Bus a little further from the station, where she wanted to go. Still she was not happy because the Bus was stopped little further where she wanted to go and that she have to walk all the way back through the tracks. .......cont'd

A small trip by some members and admins of Bangalore on the soon to be antiqued NMGA RAILBUS service.
The to and fro trip had two crews, one LP and one ALP (both DMU crew members) who were very keen to share whatever they knew about the service. So much was their excitement that they took pics of we 'crazy railfans'. :)
There were about 15 travelers in the railbus including 4 from IRI. The fuel tank capacity is 65 litres and the railbus is filled to 3/4th of...
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the capacity which the crew claims serves them for 2 days. In other words, IR spends about 800 rupees on a one way YPR-NMGA service and the ticket sales are just in the range of rs 100-200 per day. Talk about IR making losses. :-/
But the journey was memorable, and a well cherished one knowing that the service may never run after tomorrow.