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posted in alayam on 11/14/06
As I typed the southern railways URL, I was feeling proud. I was an ardent fan of the Indian railways, and tried to defend it when somebody criticized it. With 100 of trains passing daily behind my house, the sound of a train was dissolved in my mind and I never found it odd when a train passed by.
Today I was going to the Southern Railway website to check the spot the train section, a section which was introduced more than a year ago. It showed live positions of the train in the Chennai division covering a radius of about 200kms in the west and around 120km in the north and south.
I was looking for Bangalore Chennai Shatabdi Express. My dad was coming form Bangalore and the train had left Bangalore an hour late than the scheduled time. It was not found anywhere and so I concluded that it has not come within the Chennai division (Jolarpettai to be precise). It was around 6.30 pm when I checked that. With no work in office pending, I decided to start for home. After a tiring journey through the so called roads and the heavy traffic, I reached home at around 9 pm.
I directly went and switched on the computer and went to the same site. The site didn take much time to load and I was surprised not to find the train in the map. Has the train reached? No way. It would have been a before time, very unlikely in this case.
To my surprise I found all the trains very safe in the same place which I saw about one and half hours before. What happened to all the trains? It was raining but not that heavily to stop all the trains in the place for such a long time. The page kept on refreshing every minute, but strangely all the trains were at the same place. Then I saw a label at the top right hand corner of the map which said Last Updated Time: 13/11/2006 18:45.
I had seen the site only once before and all my impression about it crashed. It was raining heavily and I thought I will go to the station to receive my dad. I started cursing the railways and started towards the local station. I had to take a EMU train from that station to Chennai Central. I got the tickets and I walked towards the platform still cursing the railways.
I had a local train at 21.55 pm. As the time came there was no sign of the EMU coming. At the same time, I heard the sound of another train going at a very high speed. I turned around to get a glimpse of the train. The coaches were different Cream and blue in colour and air conditioned fully. Nobody could miss that even if it just flew by. Yes it was the Shatabdi Express.
I looked at my watch. 9.55pm. The train should reach central in another 10 minutes, delaying the journey time totally by half an hour and actually gaining half an hour in such a small time span. I smiled for the first time in an hour. Though many trains would have been sacrificed for making up this half an hour, I didn feel bad. I used to hate when Passenger trains were stopped to let express trains pass by. But not now. Dunno why. I called up my father to say that I will be waiting in the local station.
As I left the station after half an hour with dad, I was not cursing the railways.
Today I was going to the Southern Railway website to check the spot the train section, a section which was introduced more than a year ago. It showed live positions of the train in the Chennai division covering a radius of about 200kms in the west and around 120km in the north and south.
I was looking for Bangalore Chennai Shatabdi Express. My dad was coming form Bangalore and the train had left Bangalore an hour late than the scheduled time. It was not found anywhere and so I concluded that it has not come within the Chennai division (Jolarpettai to be precise). It was around 6.30 pm when I checked that. With no work in office pending, I decided to start for home. After a tiring journey through the so called roads and the heavy traffic, I reached home at around 9 pm.
I directly went and switched on the computer and went to the same site. The site didn take much time to load and I was surprised not to find the train in the map. Has the train reached? No way. It would have been a before time, very unlikely in this case.
To my surprise I found all the trains very safe in the same place which I saw about one and half hours before. What happened to all the trains? It was raining but not that heavily to stop all the trains in the place for such a long time. The page kept on refreshing every minute, but strangely all the trains were at the same place. Then I saw a label at the top right hand corner of the map which said Last Updated Time: 13/11/2006 18:45.
I had seen the site only once before and all my impression about it crashed. It was raining heavily and I thought I will go to the station to receive my dad. I started cursing the railways and started towards the local station. I had to take a EMU train from that station to Chennai Central. I got the tickets and I walked towards the platform still cursing the railways.
I had a local train at 21.55 pm. As the time came there was no sign of the EMU coming. At the same time, I heard the sound of another train going at a very high speed. I turned around to get a glimpse of the train. The coaches were different Cream and blue in colour and air conditioned fully. Nobody could miss that even if it just flew by. Yes it was the Shatabdi Express.
I looked at my watch. 9.55pm. The train should reach central in another 10 minutes, delaying the journey time totally by half an hour and actually gaining half an hour in such a small time span. I smiled for the first time in an hour. Though many trains would have been sacrificed for making up this half an hour, I didn feel bad. I used to hate when Passenger trains were stopped to let express trains pass by. But not now. Dunno why. I called up my father to say that I will be waiting in the local station.
As I left the station after half an hour with dad, I was not cursing the railways.
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