Traveling on the Burning Train

After shifting base to Mumbai for over a decade, I never got a chance to travel to Pune though I had an opportunity to use the Mumbai-Pune expressway for my 2 trips to Lonavla and Khandala. But when recently, I had to stay in Pune for 2 weeks for my job, I got to see the city.

Since it was a 2 week stay, I decided to come back to Mumbai over the weekend to my home. Pune Mumbai travel was done using Indrayani Express but for the return journey, I booked on the very well known Deccan Queen Express from CST. It is indeed fast train skipping some important station like Dadar with clean coaches and courteous staff. Everything was on track and we were cruising on time. Just a kilometer or so, our train stopped. Since it was an abrupt stop or something, I thought maybe its a routine signal stop. I was engrossed in the music and did not sense anything wrong but a lot of people were moving in and out of the compartment.

After 15 minutes or so, when the train did not move, I got a little curious and asked my co-passenger if there is any issue. I was shell-shocked by his answer. He told me that the ENGINE WAS ON FIRE!

Knowing that this is an unheard incident, I decided to get down and walk to the engine to see it. The thick smoke coming out from the engine had engulfed the complete area. It was more than 20 minutes already and no fire-tender was in site. Some of the pictures of the same are here.
After an hour or so, the first fire tender arrived but the fire was just too much to handle. In the next hour or so, 6 more fire tenders came in and doused the fire. After that, a new engine came to our rescue and we started our journey back on. The only saving grace was that lights and the AC was working in the compartment.

A total of three and a half hours were wasted. Add to that the delay of other trains on the same line and cancellation of local trains which run on Kalyan-Karjat line. This incident clearly highlighted the pathetic emergency handling skills of the railways. This fire did get some space in the press!