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Journey Date 14th June 2012... Coach J10....
I had to go on an urgent official trip to New Delhi in a very short notice.So I booked tickets in this train. I tried booking tatkal tickets the day before in other trains but failed to do so.
The Yuva Express with its livery green coaches chugged in at pf no. 11 of howrah station. J10 was i guess the third coach from behind. So I didn't have to walk that long along the platform to board the train. J10 was a Garib Rath coach....
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It was a complete mismatch and the beautiful colour of the train got messed up due to that coach. Any ways, I got into the coach and occupied my seat. The train was nearly 80% occupied. Most of the people were travelling on urgent basis,left with no other option they booked tickets in yuva exp. There were many passengers who were going from hwh to ndls.... some passengers had tickets till mgs,cnb,ald too.... After getting in there was a mad rush among passengers to put their luggages in the bunk over the seats.... Frankly,the bunk for keeping luggages was simply not enough considering the huge amount of luggage each person was carrying....The train started on time and soon it acquired nice speed. I then realised that Yuva Express is a tradeoff between comfort and speed. In terms of speed it gives rajdhanis a close competition.... the train whistled past the stns in the hwh-bwn chord section without letting down its pace for a single moment.... at 6:10 i.e. within 1 hr the train skipped bardhaman at around 60kph..... In the meantime, the tte put two waitlisted passengers in the seat beside mine which were vacant till then..... orders for dinner were taken by catering agency. I refrained from placing any order since I was carrying home made food. Moreover from personal experience the food supplied by catering people r usually bad.... the train continued its dream run till asansol blazing past the stations enroute... dgr,raniganj were paid scant respect by the yuva.... it reached asanol 10 mins before time.... many passengers boarded from there... and the train was packed now.... the two seats beside mine were infact reserved by two people from asansol to new delhi.... they boarded and asked the 2 waitlisted passengers to vacate the seat... they however refuesed to budge saying that tte had alloted them the seat and had also taken money for that.... The tte was called for and after lots of arguments the waitlisted passengers had to vacate the seats...... the train in the meantime reached dhanbad again 10 minutes before time we met the 12313 sdah rajdhani there..... after crossing dhanbad it started losing speed and at times crawled past the stns enroute... the train made unscheduled halts at koderma,gaya,dehri on sone,manpur,anugraha narayan road...... At Gaya we met the down Chambal Express..... After crossing Gaya though the train started increasing its speed and in no time was travelling at 100 kph.... It reached MGS 20 mins before time !!... There we met the bbs rajdhani exp.... Many people were infact sleeping on the passage,some between the seats,some near the doors,some near the bathrooms... I had a torrid time in making my way to the bathroom..... i managed to sleep somehow.... as one of my fellow passenger slept on the passenger i asked the other to put his head on the other side and his leg over the seat..... I too did the same but put my leg over the trays meant for eating..... We reached Allahabad after crossing the bridge over the river at around 4 p.m. ... 20 mins behind schedule...
To be continued based on public response