Replying to Caravanman in India

Hi Folks,

I have finished my trip now, and finished the trip report, the whole report is here: Caravanman's Indian Summer...

Thanks for reading it, any comments most welcome.

Ed

PS I look forward to Texan Eagle's report too!

As always Well Done Eddie! Those of us that cant travel abroad get to esperience trips like this and it is the next best thing to being there! Guess you're back in Jolly OLd England by now, hope you can enjoy the Holiday Spirit, after all Scrooge did come from England! Hope to see you in the Colonies next year, pretty good chance that the Gathering will be in Philadelphia!!! Jim

Hi Folks,

I have finished my trip now, and finished the trip report, the whole report is here: Caravanman's Indian Summer...

Thanks for reading it, any comments most welcome.

Ed

PS I look forward to Texan Eagle's report too!

I am myself traveling to India in late January 2012 and will be taking train from Bombay to Calcutta and back, by two different routes. I will share my photos and experience here too.

Are you planning to be at the IRFCA Convention in Kolkata the last weekend of January. I am very likely to be there too.

Hello Caravanman
Late to jump onto the bandwagon but just now I finished seeing all your photos and reading everything from your travel diary from the India trip. Beautiful set of photos and writing. Being born and raised in India, I have a special love for Indian trains and somehow for me Amtrak trains fail to recreate the same feeling that train travel in India has. Looking forward to more photos and writ-ups from your India trip. I am myself traveling to India in late January 2012 and will be taking train from Bombay to Calcutta and back, by two different routes. I will share my photos and experience here too.

Hi Folks,

Today is the halfway mark of my trip, time wise... two weeks gone already.
I have been taking it easy in Madras (Chennai), a very different feel to the north. I even noticed some traffic obeying the rules of the road... stopping at lights, crossings, etc. Feels a little less frantic. My hotel is about a mile from the sea, so I took a rather hot walk there and back on Sunday afternoon. Beach and sea, Madras.
There is a degree of unrest in India, with different factions agitating for their demands to be heard, so while not too OTT, the photographing of stations and rail property is frowned upon.
This afternoon I will make my way to the Egmore station and board the train which takes me down to Kanyakamari, the southernmost tip of India, where 3 seas meet. It is an overnight trip, arriving mid morning tomorrow.
I am updating my travel diary as I go, so if you are interested you can check it by following the link on my post of 30th Nov.(Post number 3).

Cheers,

Ed

Wow! Pretty light traffic on Howrah Bridge that day!

Hi Folks,

Arrived in Chennai (formerly Madras) yesterday evening. Having internet just now, I have added a few more travel pics:

View from a bridge...

Cheers,

Ed

Ok on the info on train re-numbering, I seem to remember that on my first visit here over 25 years ago, I took the train no. 1 up Kalka Mail en route to Shimla. Sadly noticed that a Kalka train was recently involved in a derailment killing many passengers, including tourists.

1up/2down Howrah - Delhi - Kalka Mail via Grand Chord, I believe is now 12311 up and 12312 down, but I need to check to make sure. It was one of the three original EIR (now Eastern Railway) Mail trains from Howrah. The other two being Punjab Mail now Amritsar Mail, (via Main Line) which ran to Peshawar Cantt. before partition and Bombay Mail via Allahabad (and Grand Chord). In addition Howrah has two original Mail trains on BNR (now South Eastern Railway), still running, those being Bombay Mail via Nagpur and Madras Mail.

Hi,

Ok on the info on train re-numbering, I seem to remember that on my first visit here over 25 years ago, I took the train no. 1 up Kalka Mail en route to Shimla. Sadly noticed that a Kalka train was recently involved in a derailment killing many passengers, including tourists.

I hope to add a bit more to the travel diary while I have internet access, so do check back... I am just off for lunch, pakoras and finger chips...

Cheers,

Ed

You are quite right about the Rajdhanni being number 12302... did you know that, or have you a copy
of the indispensible "trains at a glance"???

I do have a Trains at a Glance, but I don't need to look this one up.

That particular Rajdhani - Howrah - New Delhi - Howrah via Grand Chord, used to be my old stomping grounds. It was introduced in 1969, the first Rajdhani Express, which inaugurated a whole new class of trains. Originally its number was 101up/102down. Then during the great India train number rationalization it became 2301up/2302down (23 designating that the special express consists are homed and maintained in Howrah/Sealdah ER). And finally last year when they extended all train numbers to 5 digits it became 12301up/12302down. I regularly rode it 2 to 4 times each year between 1969 and 1977 when I left India for the US. I have ridden it several times since then on various visits to India.

When it was originally introduced it was pulled by a LeGrange built EMD IR Class WDM-4. Of course these days it gets a WAP-5 or WAP-7, the electric passenger workhorses of IR. You can see one of them, I think it is a WAP-5, in my avatar above.

Reading your writeup, sounds like you took the Amritsar Shatabdi from New Delhi? Even though there is nothing spectacularly noticeable on the way, you actually passed through some very historic locations, starting with Panipat, where anyone that ever managed to conquer Delhi had to fight a battle to get to Delhi. We jokingly used to talk about the n-th Battle of Panipat in our high school history classes. Then you passed through Kurukshetra where the epic battle of Mahabharata took place and the encounter between Arjuna and his estranged cousins that led to the composition of the Bhagavad Gita took place. Then Ambala which had a huge British Cantonment which exists to this day but now occupied by the Indian armed forces. The station is still called Ambala Cantonment. And finally of course Amritsar the home of Sikhism and its Golden Temple which you visited, and the border with Pakistan at Wagah which has seen military confrontation both in 1965 and 1971.