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!

Tatkal Booking

'Tatkal', a hindi word, means 'immediately' or 'on the spot'. So, our beloved Indian Railways started this service some years back for passengers who are not early planners or need to travel on a very short notice. Details are easily available on the web and even online booking is possible.

But me as an individual never got the opportunity to avail the facility, due to the combined effect of lesser frequency of traveling, low air-fares, advance planning and lastly having a relative working in the Railways. But this time it was different!

Our academic calendar is made well in advance and accordingly, we had booked our tickets for leaving Calcutta. But, there were unanticipated changes in the schedule and we had get put tickets advanced by 2 days. Since, the tickets were wait-listed on all trains, beyond the hope of getting confirmed, we decided to use the service this time around. Moreover, the travel date would be the 7th of this month, booking was scheduled to open at 8 am on the 2nd.

I got up well in time and was ready to hit the online booking counter in time. When I tried to book at maybe some seconds before 8, the system did not allow me (nice checks, I must say!). Finally, at 8:01 am, I was able to search for the train in which I needed the booking. Now, see this - there are 120 tickets for 3AC to be booked for tatkal in the train and when I check the status, the number of available seats has gone down to 108 already. When I click next, I get the wonderful message of "Service Unavailable" which basically means that site is choked and my whole exercise till this time turned to be futile.

I had to relogin and do the whole train searching business again but same result. Finally, after like 6-7 attempts, it started working for me. But, in the meantime, the number of available seats had gone down to 104. When I entered the details and proceeded to make the payment, the system took more than average time and again, 1 more seat was gone! After selecting payment gateway and entering the credit card details, I paused for a moment and thought "What if the system fails or does not work at this crucial moment?!". But, there was no other option in life, I took God's name and hit the "PAY" button.

The message on the left corner of my browser showed "Waiting for www.irctc.co.in..." with processing going on but right corner showed no progress in the progress bar. I had nothing else to do but wait and wait and wait. After some time, when nothing had happened, I started to get jittery (as I know how much time an online payment takes) but there was nothing I could do.

I decided to get some fresh air and come back some time. As soon as I entered the room, the page changed and I saw Indian congratulating me on booking the ticket. I heaved a sigh of relief after getting confirmed tickets.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the number of available seats and it had gone down to 84 or something. After 10 minutes, it was 68!

What I personally feel is that opening booking 5 days in advance (excluding travel date) is first of all little too wide a window. It should be 3 days IMHO. Secondly, website needs to be revamped to handle such a large number of requests. Though, the percentage of times it happens is really less but the discomfort and frustration caused is enormous.

Hope, railways does something about it. But a great service, do doubt about that :)