I want to share a real train story. I have travelled in various trains to howrah from south india to Kolkata, more than 15 times in 22 years. Out of that 3 times from chennai by Trivandrum/Cochin-Howrah when its schedule departure from Chennai was 7:30am (approx).
But the first 2 times i travelled, this train arrived at chennai late by about 45 minutes and started just 20-30 minutes before corramandel exp. And both times corramandel overtook my train. This made me very sad.
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The next time also i could not get a reserved ticket in corramandel and again got the ticket in Cochin-Howrah only. This time I was travelling from Mysore and reached chennai central early morning (Cauvery exp, at that time it used to reach 4 or 5am). I took some bfast and waited.
I hoped that my train will come at 7am and leave at 7:30 and corramandel won't overtake me. But Lo, Cochin-Howrah came after 7:30. They gave green signal just after 8am but train didn't start because loading was not complete at the luggage van. So signal was promptly withdrawn. Again we got green after 20-30 minutes and train started.
But wherever we stopped, i heard announcements that corramandel will arrive shortly. Just before we left Vijayawada corramendel actually arrived, but we were allowed to depart first. I thought that this time atleast my train will not allow that corramandel exp to overtake. We thundered along.
I slept. I was tired because i departed from mysore last evening about 6pm. I don't remember how long i slept. Then to my very great disappointment i noticed Corramandel express whistling and swishing past my train, which was stationary at some small station. They have stopped us to allow this overtaking. I became extremely sad.
Suddenly i woke up and found i was sleeping in the side upper berth !!!! How could i have seen corramandel overtaking me from the side upper berth? That was a dream! My God ! You should accept me as a real rail fan. Thank you for patiently reading this real story. I would be happy to read your comments tomorrow. I am now logging out.