At the outset, my sincere apologies to keep you waiting for the Travelogue.

PART 3: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

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Sight of the Vande Bharat rake did impress me. Spotlessly clean, shiny white rake was ready to roll off for its next journey. Many passengers from Children to teenage to old men and Women were busy with clicking selfies in front of the rake.

As it was way too early, I strode down the entire rake length from inside admiring its beauty. The front Cab being fag end of platform, didn’t have anyone taking selfies giving me ample time to admire the Beautiful Beastie. The wipers were on, cleaning the lookout glass with water. Needless to say, it was love at first sight.

Newspapers were handed out to passengers or kept on seats yet to be occupied, quite well before the departure time.

It was soon time to depart. The Tri lingual announcements were made informing that the doors were closing. The clock ticked 05:50 but there were no signs of departure. Finally we departed at 05:55 hours, 5 minutes behind schedule.

The Acceleration out of Platform 1, itself promised some high adrenaline runs in this journey. Basin Bridge was skipped sooner than expected and the magic figure of 110 (now the section has been upgraded to 130) for this route reached in a jiffy. Stations after Stations we skipped at flat 110. Despite numerous slowdowns, the average was way above 100. At some stations, we entered at around 40 kmph clearing some cautions but exited at 90 – 100 kmph. The Closed Doors are a dampener for a Rail Enthusiast but full marks for the Safety Aspect here.

My Eyes were glued to next best thing to look out for which is the Speed Monitor wherein the Acceleration/ Deceleration Parameter Scored full points. The sound of TMs whining could be clearly heard for it was a lot quieter jerk free ride.

As soon as we crossed Avadi, we were served Morning Tea comprising of a Tea/ Coffee Premix, one small pack of Oatmeal Biscuits and a sanitizer Sachet. Meanwhile we overtook a BCNA freight with a WAG 7 parallely Tiruvallur and later on at Tiruvalangadu an Arakkonam bound EMU was overtaken. We were now. At Tiruvalangadu we were put on Down Local Line and in under a minute we were back to MPS. We slowed down to negotiate our entry into Arakkonam Jn which was exited at 60 kmph+ as we now took the Katpadi bound route. One route from Arakkonam Jn takes you towards Renigunta Jn, while one from Chengalpattu Jn via Kanchipuram joins here. At Arakkonam Jn, quadruple lines from Chennai ends and the route forward is a Fully Electrified Double line.


Final Part will be posted soon.