Day 2 - We were heading towards New Delhi. I woke up at 6 at Hapur Jn. Lucknow AC was looped at Hapur. Mail left Hapur a few minutes ago. We were detained there almost an hour and surprisingly we got overtaken by Lucknow - Anand Vihar special there. I remember AJ Bhai was on board New Delhi - Kathgodam Shatabdi Express and I was still at Hapur that time. Somanko Da was on board Sealdah Rajdhani, I was worried that he might reach Ghaziabad before me but luckily we arrive Ghaziabad at 8:45 a.m. After getting delayed we finally reached New Delhi at 9:48 a.m.
Ashutosh Mishra was waiting for me at New Delhi he was there since morning. We...
more... finally moved towards our convention location which was Hotel Tourist Deluxe. I guess almost 30-40 members were there. After meeting with moderator sir and our rf buddies. To have a short trip to Ghaziabad in Gomti Express. We headed towards New Delhi then purchased UR tickets and boarded the first general coach from the loco. Badelog and Shivang Pandey were on the gate to make journey compilation. I remember most of us were having cucumber during the trip :p. There was a lot of Rf discussion going on during the trip. We reached Ghaziabad almost on time. Its time to return back to NDLS so, we left no other train to accept Swatantrata Senani, it arrived on platform number 5. The train was jam-packed it was full of waitlisted passengers. Be divided into small teams can enter into different coaches I remember Arpit bro and Mradul was with me in my sleeper coach. We reached NDLS at 2 - 2:30.
At Hotel, during lunch, most of the members were discussing the railfanning locations, trains or regarding operations. Ankit Sharma was discussing Rf locations while Aditya Bhai was telling about SER. After lunch, Somanko Da left for Rajdhani. Moderator sir gave momentos to all the attendees and everybody shared their railfanning experience to others.
We discussed many things like the future of IRI, The regular issues on the site.
It was almost 5:30 pm. We had our evening snacks and then we departed towards the station to onboard 12560 Shiv Ganga Express. Arthrva took GT Express for Agra, Arpit Bhai took Chetak from Rohilla. Badelog and Ashutosh went to check the loco link. Meanwhile, we settled our luggage in S1 and took some pics at NDLS. Badelog and Ashutosh greeted us and we departed from NDLS on time.
The train started picking speed after Tilak bridge. The RPF close all the doors and warned us to not to use the phone near the windows. Anurag, Satish, Rahul Jain, Faiz, Ankit Khare, Mradul were there. I still remember how the cap was given to Keshav at ALJN by Mod sir and Anurag Bhai. Ankit and I decided to awake till ETW to get overtaken by Sealdah Duronto but we fell asleep and Duronto finally overtook us at Panki. To be continued....
I'm heartily thankful to WC Goyal sir for the arrangements at New Delhi without him things wouldn't happen so smoothly.
Previous travelogue-
/blog/post/4666838
