Fear gives way to relief as Coromandel resumes ops

KOLKATA: Dispelling fear of travelling on Coromandel Express five days after it was involved in one of India's most devastating rail accidents, passengers across ages and profiles experienced an overwhelming sense of relief when the train to Chennai rolled out six minutes late from Shalimar station on Wednesday.
On Friday, another German-made LHB rake of the 12841 Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express loaded with passengers departed Shalimar at 3.20pm. What transpired three hours later also changed the lives of several who were miles away from the accident scene of Bahanaga Bazar. "Since Saturday, Howrah station's platform number 17 has been our address. Three months ago, we bought confirmed AC 2-tier tickets for June 3 (Saturday). As one train after another was cancelled till yesterday, we have been running up and down Howrah and Shalimar stations, paying exorbitant cab fares, to be on the next Coromandel Express. Finally, we are on board," sighed Rajesh Kumar Sinha, a defence staff at Chennai's Tambaram Air Force Station. The family of four from Bhagalpur were on a month's holiday in their hometown and scheduled to return to Chennai on Sunday.
"There were around 20 beds in the Sainik Aram Greh, the restroom set up for on-transit defence personnel at the platform. It was so crowded that we took turns to lie on the beds. It was hellish. Innumerable trains were cancelled over the last four days and we, the affected passengers, were nobody's baby, not even the railways'," rued his wife Somi. They have bought general compartment tickets to travel the 1,660km from Kolkata to Chennai, hoping to be allotted at least one berth for the night.
Migrant labourers Rahajan Sheikh, Palash Naskar and Rahamat Ali said they would look for some room on the floor next to the toilets of the unreserved compartment and take turns to sit down. With most trains running three or four hours late post the train accident, they didn't seem to mind that this Coromandel may be reaching hours after the scheduled 4.40pm arrival on Thursday. "We thought Coromandel, which literally feeds our families, had gone off track indefinitely. Thank god, it hasn't," said Ali, who works at a construction site in Chennai. The Joynagar resident said, "We had bought bus tickets and were about to embark upon several break journeys to Chennai, but rushed to Shalimar station as soon as we heard that our favourite train was back on track."
Chennai resident S K Rathi, 68, had stayed up all night praying that his confirmed tickets bought three months ago wouldn't go to waste. So was D B Pankaj, a teacher, who bought his Coromandel ticket and another connecting one for Jan Shatabdi Hyderabad three months ago. "My heartfelt thanks to Indian Railways for streamlining train movement despite the enormity of the accident," said Pankaj.