A mundane commute brings me back to blogging after a hiatus

I had gone slow on blogging in the past few months. You can blame it on the transition from being ‘Single’ to ‘Married’ or to sheer lack of enthusiasm to write. So when I decided to blog again, my first love came to the rescue, ‘Railfanning’. Here we go again. :-)

To see the break of dawn, you need to rise earlier than the Sun. The alarm rang at 5:45am and giving it symphony was the patter of raindrops hitting my window pane. Snoozing and going back to sleep in such a misty weather  was  not an option for me considering the fact that I was handling my department alone for the last 14 days without even a weekly off as my colleague was on his annual leave.

The 10 day long Ganesh Festival had culminated yesterday night and I was expecting more people to board trains to work today with an irritated frame of mind (We are always lazy and irritated to join back after a long leave). The early news pouring in on Whatsapp group dedicated to Railfanning was that, EMUs on CR and WR were running late because of the incessant rains last night.

As usual, the morning chores got the better of me and instead of reaching on time to catch the 7.01 slow to Ghatkopar (GC); I reached at 7:09. A cursory glance at the Down Fast indicator, gave me a glimmer of hope. The 6:58am, 15 car Fast to Kalyan (KYN) was yet to arrive. This train reaches KYN by 7:07 and returns back at 7:14. Following it, is a barrage of Fast locals as the official peak hour starts with this local. EMUs start getting priority on the section after the 7:14 fast, prior to that, it’s the Mail/Expresses (M/E) which rule the roost. I decided to board this local in return direction which was now late by 12 minutes, expecting a faster turnaround at KYN. Soon we reached KYN platform 6 and I noted that an UP Fast had already reached from South East (SE) line and the acumen of the Section Controllers, made it leave ASAP. Amazingly, we were allowed to follow this local, which normally follows the 15 car, as today we were late and that SE line UP Direction Fast was on time. We had a turnaround time of just 2 minutes and departed KYN delayed by 8 min.

The Maximum Permissible Speed (MPS) of the 15 car is 90kmph whereas the local which went ahead of us is 100kmph. We reached Dombivli (DI), now late by 8 minutes. The sweeping job of emptying the commuters of platform 5 of DI was done by the Fast which left ahead of us. So the 15 car had comparatively less people to board. The Permanent Speed Restriction (PSR) of 50kmph at Diva (DW) and Caution Order(CO) inside the Parsik Tunnel not withstanding we managed to reach GC late only by 6 min at 7:55,against the schedule of 7:49.

I am sure by the time it reaches CST Mumbai, further cut in the lost time can be brought in and again a shorter turnaround time at CST should fairly bring it back on time for the next service in Down direction. There are so many departments working in unison to keep the Mumbai Railways working on time. Kudos to all of them from the bottom of my heart as it’s the functioning of various unknown people in railways that keeps the lifeline of Mumbai running day in and day out.

Nikhil P Karunakaran