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I had this personal trip on 8th February 2024 to Bhopal. This train is from the south, and they have a hammer 🔨 for emergencies, haha. I took the Kerala Express on a Thursday night to Bhopal. I chose this train because I was able to get a side upper berth in the Shaan E Bhopal Express, even though there were 7 available seats in 2A at the time of booking. Many passengers boarded the train until Bhopal, especially from Agra and Mathura. My coach, A2, was almost full with people going to Bhopal or boarding from there. The maintenance of the train was just enough for basic survival, nothing too comfortable to travel all the way to Trivandrum. This was evident in the bookings for 2A, where there were barely 7-8 passengers traveling to Kerala in both coaches from New Delhi, with only 3 of them going till Trivandrum. Most of the bookings were from Bhopal and Agra. We had to wait for more than 20 minutes before reaching Mathura and Bina Junction. Clearly, this train doesn't have much priority. Despite leaving Bina Junction at 05:15 AM, we reached Bhopal Junction Outer at 06:20 AM without any stops. Karnataka Express was closely following us. The pantry car was practically non-existent. The vendors only served chicken/egg/vegetable biryani, and the water guy hardly came by. Luckily, I had bought everything from New Delhi before boarding.