Safer, faster, better
I was dismayed. I had landed the last row in AC Chair Car on the Vande Bharat day train from Bangalore to Ernakulam. I had barely sat down, and a current of cool air rained on me. I ignored it. Then it happened again. “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action,” quipped James Bond, in Ian Fleming’s 1959 film, Goldfinger.
Each time the coach# 10 door slid open, the wind curtain kicked in, presumably to trap the cool air and keep flies and dust out. A waterfall similarly sheltered Phantom’s Dankali Caves. Adding to my woes was an infuriating seatmate commandeering the armrest to operate his cell phone like a joystick. He was an excitable chap. He would elbow me in my rib cage in the heat of a fight scene in the movie.
My counterpart across the aisle, on whom misery too rained, pulled up his hoodie and sank further into the seat. Just for a moment, I thought he would slip under the front seat, given the trajectory of his descent.
I had to engineer my escape from Dante’s Hell. My rescuer was a very pleasant lady TC who processed my discomfort like a mother would her baby in a wet nappy and beamed me through her notepad to coach fourteen, which doubled as the motorman cabin, with a throttle and all, and a pilot and copilot.
Through a porthole in the partition, one could see the pilot operating the train. The copilot was a woman whose job was to call out the signals, look around the corners when the track curved tortuously, and be a sentinel to the driver, to keep him on track, moving the throttle forward, backwards, and to lock it to stop or to run at a constant speed on a straight track. There is little else functionally that I saw the driver do.
Imagine relentlessly and monotonously looking into the horizon with the high-strength carbon steel parallel rails coming at you like shooting stars and slipping under, like the guy in the hoodie, held down by fish plates onto the sleepers and the ballast underneath for drainage, a combination of elements that must work together for a safe journey. A missing fishplate or a bolt can spell death and destruction.
For a railway kid in the 70s, who often rode to school from Ajni to Nagpur on the coal-fired steam engine when we missed the local train, or in the guard’s compartment, the Vande Bharat motorman cabin was chalk and cheese while the function was the same - to tow the train - but with a big difference. Every second coach on the Vande Bharat has its own drivetrain charged by overhead electrical lines and batteries that store energy, including recharging when braking.
Train 18, alias Vande Bharat, was conceived, designed, and built indigenously by Indian Railways on a fast track of 18 months. The ride to Ernakulam was the first one for me on this marvel of a train, an urgently needed tech upgrade for Indian Railways, hitherto moribund with 20th-century-old rakes from British times.
A superior, faster, air-conditioned, soot-free travel at an average speed of 90 km per hour with limited stops for to-and-fro travel in 18 hours. For a courier service, same-day delivery for distances under 650 kms is possible on the Vande Bharat schedule and speed.
There is a mere half-hour stop at Ernakulam station for disembarking, cleaning, loading up pantry, embarking, and the return journey effected by the pilots crossing over to the bi-directional motorman cabin. The last becomes the first in this 16-coach train with motorman cabins on each end.
“So the last shall be first, and the first last“ (Mt 20:16). Ecclesiastes 3:1–8 in the Bible famously declares, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven“. It would be facetious to imagine the Bible was referring to Train 18. Notwithstanding, Train 18 is God-sent for commuters between the two cities, with a break in schedule on Wednesday for men and machinery to recharge.
Especially the pantry crew, who work an 18-hour day to return to the point of origin, with little rest, as passengers board every hour on the two-way eight-station schedule. The crew make do with a six-hour rest at night, i.e. if the train ran on schedule to return by 11 pm. Presumably, the pantry crew is paid overtime for work beyond 8 hours. It would be a gross injustice by IRCTC if that is not the case
Train 18, over 50 in operation, all India, rides like a smoothie. Trains that fly like a plane without leaving terra firma, with on-board meals and clean toilets but non-toilet-trained passengers.
Everything in the toilet is electronically operated except the toilet user. Used tissues lie around, in compliance with the sign that said not to throw them in the toilet bowl. So, they throw it where it is not forbidden, except in the flush-cut retrieval dustbin. Tech has its limits. No arm comes out of the walls to grab the offender and thrash him.
The stops at the six stations between Bangalore and Ernakulam are brief, like the Mumbai Locals: a shade longer by a minute to disembark and to embark. As with the regular trains, there is no question of fetching coffee, tea, idli and vada, or a newspaper from the station vendor. The automatic doors will close on such escapades.
I felt safe and in good hands with the tech and throttle-controlled machinery running on rails. I am afraid I do not feel the same on long-distance buses that bounce around to skip potholes and oncoming rash drivers, and regular trains that hurtle through mist, smoke, crashing wind, the only reality being it is still anchored between the twin tracks on the sleeper beds with fishplates and bolts intact.
What could be a better metaphor for faith than being a passenger on a speeding train in the wee hours of the night with nary a human in sight, bludgeoning the rails with its weight and power to get to its destination, as this verse: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” Hebrews 11:1
- Mathew Anthony
