Deccan Queen - मेरे सपनों की रानी

After staying for the day at CSTM dormitory and visiting GoI, museum, marine drive, in the evening we moved out of dormitory and collected luggage from cloak room. After experiencing the crowd on mumbai local in morning (PNVL-CSTM) decided to take the local that goes upto Kalyan only. But to my dismay display board showed all destinations but not Kalyan. I waited as I knew there were some locals terminating at KYN and also my connecting train was at 1am, so I was not in a hurry. I tried to connect to MTS wifi at CSTM but password was not being sent, neither could I connect to my mobile data. So waited. Finally at 2020 hrs it showed semi local to Kalyan at 2042. Quickly bought tickets and moved to PF 7. The local arrived and everyone boarded. Within 5 minutes hardly, local started its return journey to KYN. It became...
more...

too much crowded. I thought the crowd would disperse at TNA, at Domvibli but no, number of people getting down was lesser than number of people boarding. So it remained crowded throughout the way till KYN. At KYN got down at PF 1 and moved to PF4 from which our train was scheduled to depart. I had 2 hours to kill so connected to RAILWIRE and enjoyed wifi access. I spent 2 hrs at KYN, and in that 2 hrs good no of trains psssed through Pf 4& 5. PF 4 handled CSTM -SUR SF, ltt rjpb exp, cstm snsi pass, kushinagar exp, ltt-ppta sf, ltt-sc drnt, cstm asr exp, etc. Pf 5 handled chennai mail, ltt cbe exp, hussain sagar, and others. PF 6 handled hwh-cstm, hw-ltt ac, ju-sbc exp. PF 5-6 handled local too. So lot of trains passed during that duration. After departure of 11057 CSTM-ASR exp, coach position of 12811 started to display. Within 10 minutes the train arrived with SRC P4 and old coaches. The gates of S12 were closed, so we didnt wait for gates to be opened and instead got in in S13 and came to our berth in S12 via vestibule. Saw the coach, and except cleanliness, nothing was good. Condition of seats, windows, lights everything was bad. Waht can you expect in coach made in 1992? No charging point, even at gates. The rains started again, and I tried to close the window. By the time I closed the window, my half sleeve of full sleeved shirt was wet along with part of my seat. Even after closing the window, water was leaking from corners of window. Fed up, I shifted my bag from under the seat to the seat. Waited sometime for TTE to check tickets. But by 2 am even tickets were not checked. I slept finally. In the morning woke up when the train reached BHUSAWAL. By the time train řeached AKOLA, train was 1 hr+ late. But after AKOLA, train was flying and as a result reached NGP at 1310 hrs i.e. 30 mins BT. We were placed on PF 6 and on PF 7 SHM-LTT waited for departure. Water was being filled in the train. On PF 4 came DNR-SC SF and after a considerable halt time departed with BSL P4. Finally we departed NGP at 1400 hrs ,dot on time. As we exited NGP, TN exp to chennai entered NGP. I was waiting for the diamond crossing but to my bad luck, just as we approached diamond crossing HWH -CSTM mail approached and finally we missed the proper view of diamond crossing. The train gained speed and ran like anything all the way till Hatia. Reached Bilaspur 10 mins BT . Again here water was filled and toilets were cleaned. The train maintained very good speed right all the way till HTE and arrived HTE at 0355 hrs, 10 min late. Excellent train and excellent speed. So with this the trip came to end.