My trip to Chennai:
Part 1:
Train was scheduled to leave at 2305 from tcr but reached tcr station early at night as has been staying in a hotel in tcr, so thought of doing some railfanning there..
Caught some trains at tcr.. first came ERS-GUV passenger, at 2200 hrs, as usual almot empty,hauled by ed wap4 after that, came tirunelveli-mumbai ltt...
more... summer special at 2210hrs with wdm3a kalyan shed after it left came kcvl ypr garib rath, which arrived sharp at 22.40 with an ed wdm3a.. after it left , my train 12696 tvc-mas superfast express was announced, it arrived with wap4 of ed shed.
Got into my coach, found it to be in very poor condition, after tte verified my ticket had a round of couple of coaches and found them to be in same condition, really pathetic to see an important train of SR running in such a pathetic condition.
Went to sleep at around 2330hrs.got up by 615am found that the train was about reach jtj , by 0615 it hauled up at pf no 3 of jtj, after it left jtj went searching for catering guys and found them in s3 coach. Had my breakfast and bought a bottle of water from them.
Soon after leaving kpd the train started crawling, stopping at almost all signal, the reason I found was that a goods rake was ahead hence this train kept creeping till ajj, reaching almost 20mnts late, where the goods was taken on another track and 12696 was allowed to move ahead, from there it took good speed and cruised ahead and reaching trl,pcw,per at time, after leaving PER it was kept waiting for almost 10 minutes before it crept on to pf no 4 of mas.