86 Express
Guntakal has been a six-point junction and divisional headquarters since 1953 and is one of the most profitable divisions in Indian Railways. It has lines to Mumbai, Vasco da Gama, Hyderabad, Howrah, Bangalore, and Chennai. Trains from east to west and north to south cross here. The station is bustling daily, and the trains stop for at least fifteen minutes. The station and the platforms have a distinct smell of coal and steam. If I do not know the train numbers, I do not belong to this town. In Guntakal, the people remember the trains by their numbers — 12 UP, 11 Down, 9UP, 10Down, 13 UP and 14 Down etc. If I walk into a restaurant, the conversation is mainly about the trains, arrivals, and departures. At least one family member in the town works at the railway station- loco driver, TTE, vendor, RMS. The railway junction employs about five thousand people directly responsible for operations. Another three thousand would account for the support staff. The indirect team working with service contractors would be another three thousand.
As there are no municipal parks or places in the town to spend the evenings, I walk to the station to see the trains and the people on the move. Higginbotham’s book shop is one attraction. I buy books and the latest magazines here. The store opens a few minutes before the arrival of the train and closes immediately after the departure. 86 Express is another attraction. It was one of the prestigious trains of the erstwhile Nizam Guarenteeed Stae Railway(NSGR), transferred to Southern Railway. The distance is about 360 km from Guntakal to Kachiguda and takes ten hours. The rake comes from Bangalore around 5 pm.
Cacophony raises to a crescendo as the train arrives with these vendors’ voices. The licenced vendors supply rush to serve the passengers on the train with their boxes of food and fruits. In addition, certain cart vendors tag along on the platform with newspapers, books and small travel trinkets. Some passengers get down for a short walk or a few stretches to fill their drinking water bottles. Petty thieves are looking for unattended purses and bags while the railway police personnel go up and down the platform with their sticks. Some beggars in soiled clothes walk from coach to coach with small bowls to collect coin donations from benevolent passengers. While the coaches get a nice shower, and so do the toilets, the track personnel inspect the coaches for the brake vacuum, making a tick-tick sound. The rake is ready for departure.
The preparations for the steam loco for 86 Express start at 2 pm in the steam shed. While the boiler, the steam generator, the tender for the coal and the water and the driver’s cabin is the main components, there are fifty mechanical parts such as a water pump, drive mechanism, piston and cylinders for inspection. The engineers check the boilers, brakes and the other mechanical parts of the loco. The staff top the tender and the water tank with coal and water, cleaning and scrubbing the loco in the steam shed.
The steam loco is a beauty. The staff in the loco shed make the loco ready as a ‘ bride’ getting ready for marriage. The crew arrives by 5 pm and makes their checks. Once the loco is all set, a vast mechanical turn table facilitates the turning of the loco by 360 degrees to align with the direction of the track, and the loco arrives by 6:30 pm on the platform. There are three crew members: Fireman I, Fireman II and the driver. Fireman II breaks the lumps of coal to the size of eggs. They can be neither too small nor too big. If small, these will end up clinker on the firebed, and larger pieces create difficulties in maintaining the pressure. The duties of the Fireman I involved feeding the coal evenly onto the firebed to keep even pressure and water level. He needs to know the route well enough to know when the train is approaching a down gradient or an up gradient so that pressure neither goes down nor goes up to blow the safety valve. The skill required to take a steam-hauled train to the destination in time is several orders of magnitude more than the required from the now designated loco pilots.
86 express gets the green signal and a whistle from the guard at 7 pm sharp and is ready to go.
As diesel locos replaced the steam locos around 1965, the steam loco of 86 Express stands as a sentinel in a railway museum, quietly telling the fairy tales of past years.
