So this is story of my first railfanning disaster back in 2003 when I was just 5. This train was known as Bombay VT back then(it might have been renamed after GKP extension but people only called its former name). I used to live at my grandfather's home in Basti and my father worked as a Maths professor at Polytechnic College of Gorakhpur for which he used to do up-down from Basti to Gorakhpur daily and when I had to go to visit my Nani's house in Gorakhpur I too did up down with him.
In morning we had 3 trains Bombay VT,Vaishali and GD-GKP passenger.
I...
more... used to hate Vaishali as I thought it had a girly name and was fan of Bombay VT. So on my birthday I got my father to promise me to take me by Bombay VT next day to GKP. It was Sunday so he was free and had no problem doing so.
On 6:30 we reached the station as 7:00-7:05 was its schedule at Basti station back then. At 7:00 an announcement came that train is running 2h late. At 7:30 Vaishali came but due to birthday promise my father let it go. At 8:30 late running Jannayak or Jansewa came ,we again let it go. At 9:00 we enquired about this train, they replied that they have no idea when it will come. At 9:40 GD-GKP passenger came and we again let it go. The morning crowd was now gone and noon crowd arrived who were waiting for Amrapali, Raptisagar and Avadh. We kept on waiting and finally at 10:30 an announcement came that 1015 is running 5h late. Now we were exhausted. My father still bound by his promise waited and let even one of the above 3 noon trains pass at 11:30(I don't remember which one). At 12:15 finally it came at PF1. The deboarding crowd was too much that day and train began departing just after 3m halt instead of its scheduled 5m halt so we entered the nearest coach we got to and that was a sleeper coach.
Usually the TT were not active between BST GKP as GKP was its last stop and we knew it from our numerous journey on this route. But on that day the luck was not on our side, just near Chureb we saw TT entering our coach. This was a disaster. TT came to us and we were fined ₹330 for that(nearly ₹700-800 in current times). So for a journey that should have been of 1h and ₹20-25, we had a journey of 6.5h and ₹350-355. I remember how my father was struggling to control his anger that day.
Since that day on my next birthdays he would present a gift to me before I ask him for some crazy promises like that.
