The concept of covering up delay doesn't exist in Indian Railways. For some reason if your trains gets delayed initially, its over your trip is doomed. Section controllers will no longer consider your train. I started in New Delhi yesterday by Kerala Express, i couldn't get a ticket on Tatkal Scam Booking, yes definately its a scam. So i took a general ticket and was waiting to board AP Express but i was unaware of non existing general coaches in that train, there was only DL1 which i found on internet that its only for handicapped and ladies. Meanwhile Kerala had arrived on the platform, to my surprise i didn't see any crowd near general coach area, without any other thought i got into it and took my seat. AP departed at 8:05 PM and Kerala followed it at 8:15 PM. Till NZM both crawled and got delayed by 30...
more... mts already, Kerala crawled further more till Faridadad and got delayed by 40 mts. And then my train picked up speed and was going at good pace, i was expecting the delay would be covered up, but no, it went till Lalitpur and looped for series of overtakes, TN, Pushpak, Karnataka and one more train i couldn't see the name overtook us. It was stopped for quite some time before the first overtake happend and stopped for more time after the last overtake happend. Followed by these overtake it never ran at its top speed. Next day again it was looped for Yesvantpur Duronto after Bina and Nagpur VB somewhere in one of the ghat stations. These overtakes were not quick, it took atleast 20 mts for each overtake. Kerala was looped when these trains were miles behind. Meanwhile we started trailing Jaipur Mysuru all the way from Rani Kamalpati, we were stopping behind it where ever it stopped, but were not allowed to overtake. Delay kept on increasing to 4 hours. All thanks for Indian Railways. I donno how their controlling thing works but in my experience its very poor. Is it mandatory to stop a train which has limited stops and is slightly delayed ? Easily it can be covered up without effecting the trains running behind it. I have observed this so many times, making a train wait unnecessarily for 15-20 for another train to overtake and adding up more delay to it. Im so tired of this journey, i think for some time from now on i wont be taking any more train journeys. I can't trust a train's punctuality anymore. Anywhere a train can get delayed and to any longer the delay can go 🙏