I had once taken this train from mas to clt. Online tatkal ticket final wait list status was wl-2 . Since ticket was online and WL, hence couldnt board mangalore mail. Immediately rushed to Chennai Egmore station and would you believ it , I got a confirmed current 3AC ticket to CLT from the current reservation counter. Probably goes to show that train is only patronised heavily between chennai and trichy. After which it is more of local passengers. In fact after erode, there were lots of passengers who used to board ac coaches and pay the difference of fare and travel short distances to cbe, palghat, shoranur etc . They were mainly company executives,sales managers etc who would get travel claims