De-Rail Fanning
On April 17, 2005, I along with my dad left home for Mumbai CST. We left home at about 12.30 noon. My elder brother dropped us at the nearest Suburban Railway Station (Belapur CBD) which is about 4 Kms away. I rushed towards the ticket counters to purchase the required tickets. Surprisingly, there was no queue! The counter clerk gave me a look when I asked him for two tickets to Mumbai CST. He was relaxing when a person came to him with a Rs. 50 note for two tickets costing Rs. 13 each. He returned me Rs. 24 without any hassles! We quickly proceeded to Platform #3 for the local. I usually prefer a local which originates from Belapur. But my dad insisted that we board the incoming local from Panvel. The station's yard welcomed me with three rakes parked parallel to each other. The Panvel- Mumbai CST local was scheduled for 1.07 PM and it reached sharply on time.
We boarded the local and found two seats. We were comfortably seated. But the comforts were short lasted since we found the compartment to be overcrowded soon. The crowd lasted upto Kurla. Beyond Kurla, the local turns left and take the harbour route. That day being a Sunday, the Down line (that is the line from CSTM to Kurla) was closed for maintenance. This ensured complete chaos since all CSTM - Bandra / Andheri locals were cancelled. We pulled into CST at about 2.10 PM.
The intention to travel upto CST was to board the Kanniyakumari bound 1081 Express that would be departing at 3.45 PM. We were at the station a full one-and-a-half hour early. There was one thing in our mind, our tickets were NOT confirmed. Our status was WL 2 and 3 in AC 3-Tier. As we reached the platform (#13), the rake was being shunted in. We had to wait for the TTE to reach to know whether he can do any thing. Finally he came in to the platform at about 3.30 PM. He confirmed that nothing can be done since it was Summer Vacation time. We had nothing to do, but, return home. We had to travel to Chengannur in Kerala. I had one thing in my mind, will the trip be cancelled?
There was something for me to be happy: We had another ticket that too, for 2432 Rajdhani Express. (This eventually got confirmed)
Now I decided to make this journey to CST a Rail fanning trip. We purchased tickets for our return journey and proceeded to Platform #1. As we entered the platform, the indicator displayed: '3:53 BR'. (BR is the code for Belapur CBD with respect to Mumbai Local trains) The locals on that day had a specialty; they would be going via Main-Line upto Kurla from where its regular route would be taken. I exploited the opportunity and really enjoyed the fast run of the local from CST to Kurla. But Kurla had some disappointment in store for us....
Due to some technical problems near Mankhurd, the Down line harbour line towards Panvel has been closed. This ensured that the local in which we were travelling was terminated at Kurla and it was returning to CST. We were totally confused. How to reach home? We later took a bus to Vashi and changed to another bus there. We returned back home at around 5.30 PM. At this time we should have crossed Karjat.
Now the temperatures began to rise. The Tickets for Rajdhani hadn't been confirmed till then. Around 8 PM, out ticket status showed up as "Confirmed".
