Part 5:The Journey: Unscheduled halts speed and a planned friend meet
In part 2 we overtook shm ltt express in Nagpur owing to its early running, a light jerk and wag sprinted out of junction and crossed ajni at 60kmph, we were running fast till butibori, where my train had its first unscheduled halt. After a touch and go halt i spotted a RTM WDM3A with BCNA cars GT was leading and making our train go slow another frieght was joined us from umred side and we had a 5 min parallel run due to slowdown and we overtook it, after another unscheduled halt at sindi where 3 frieghts were waiting we overtook another one here, a curve came where i saw...
more... a blue wag7 leading my train and was cursing icms for wrong update. Still G7 took on and after 10-12kms we were flying off at MPS(100km/h) crossed primo supremo at 220km/h and AP at 210km/h running back to back after crossing a dozen frieghts running at split intervals of 5 mins we reached sewagram where my train had a slow down and i saw the grand sewagram curve, being a bhakt i tried to caputure it but my efforts went in vain as soon as my coach had recieved a jerk due to braking. Here admin awes and other fellow railfan friends were constantly in touch and we were betting if train would take an unscheduled halt at Wardha Jn, indeed it took and i lost. The train then rushed upto dhamangaon where we overtook another frieght from loop, and had an unscheduled halt at Malkhed because of trailing some. The train did got a nice beating till now but still running, the sun was scorching to the max and doorplating was getting difficult. so i decided to enjoy AC and rested.
Just before badnera another frieght was given a go ahead and we waited at outer for 10mins where a GMO G9 boxn crossed at full speed , uptill now we had crossed around 40 frieghts and overtook 5 of them, an ed g7 was curving out of amravati loop towards mainline. The train had stopped Badnera and awes was nowhere to be seen, he came just before train got starter, we had a 2 min chat and it felt awesome that due to IRI a buddy that came driving in the scorching sun 7 kms just to meet you, and ofcourse to catch the train :p.
Our train started where a fellow fell down from running train on Badnera platform from B3 coach just because he was trying to catch it, thankfully he fell on platform and had some minor scratches, the train stopped and he boarded again, the Legendary Gitanjali crossed her AC sibling(12859 and 02860) and i came inside. The average speed was 68, i had kept a GPS speedo on to track and found out to be 68kmph post Ajni. It was 2.5hrs late and i calculated what connections i can get if train reached with same delay
Special trains in Indian railways are not meant to be trust, they are relentlessly trolled by controllers and regular trains of the route, still tables turned in the next part and also how i got an unexpected connection............
Pic1: After Chandur Gradient, WAG7 BZA leading
Pic2: same location rear end, odd duronto liveried EOG.
Snap 3,4:
#speedshots revaling top speed and average till badnera