One new compartment please

Walked into the local train compartment today to be pleasantly surprised. The Indian Railways department has been experimenting with the interiors of the compartment for sometime now. All the while I have been drawing up my own plans, mentally of course, regarding the best way to accommodate the most people. That happens only when the compartment is crowded, of course.

Well my plan was to convert the three seaters which often accommodate four people, the famous fourth seat of Mumbai Locals, into two seats. Like in the bus. Only here the rest of the plan will remain the same. While this plan has stuck in my head I have seen the authorities change the seating plans by removing one seat near the door or the two seats in the middle of the compartment or re-plan the seating to resemble the metro. People who travel everyday would have noticed what I am saying.

So yes I was glad to see my plan converted into reality. It needed some finishing touches, but yeah the plan was there. But the experiment was at the wrong time, wrong train. The Kalyan fast, in the morning is hardly crowded. In fact, there are hardly any people in the train. I travel around the same time every day, but I catch the Kasara fast or Thane fast sometimes, depending on what time I reach the platform. However, people avoid the Kalyan train for whatever reason. That is upto Dadar. Even then it is not really crowded and there are enough seats available.

The best time would be to see this was in the evening or while coming back from Kalyan in the morning. However, I am not going to do that. Have to reach office in time and I do not have the courage to jostle the crowd. So keeping fingers crossed that they like my plan and look forward to less crowded trains.

Just to inform whoever is reading, that I used to dabble in interior designing some years ago and that’s why I keep doing these renovations in my head all the time. So, since I am talking about my great plans, I have one more request from the Indian Railways and that is double decked long distance trains. The ones that go up to Virar, Kasara and Karjat. I have been expecting them for the last 10 years, but now everybody is talking about it. Even while I was getting down at my station I heard a man telling a fellow passenger that it would be nice to have double deckers to ease the crowd. So if anyone out there is listening please help get this message across to the proper people. Ciao!