Deccan Queen enters 80th year of service

Mumbai: Rail passengers of one of India's most loved trains, the Deccan Queen, will hold a birthday party at Pune railway station on Monday to celebrate the train's unstinted service for 79 long years.

Described as one of the country's first deluxe, superfast and long-distance electric-hauled passenger train, it also had other firsts of having a dining car.

Now entering its 80th year of service, the train has been a boon to daily passengers travelling between Mumbai and Pune.

Covering 192 km through lush green hills of the Western Ghats, the train starts from Pune at 7.15am and stops briefly at Lonavla, Khandala, Dadar and finally reaches Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) at 10.30am and on its return, it starts from CST at 5.10pm to stop only at Dadar, Karjat, Lonavla and Shivaji Nagar in Pune. "I have been travelling on this train for the last 15 years and it has become a second home to most of us who spend nearly seven hours on the train," Hemant Tapale, president of Mumbai-Pune Pravasi Sangh (Mumbai-Pune Passenger Association), told Gulf News.

Quite often, he says, there are instances of passengers falling ill during the journey like suffering from heart attacks and high blood pressure or even falling off the train.

"A doctor amongst us immediately attends on the sick passenger," he says.

The Sangh is also demanding a separate carriage exclusively for women pass holders, Tapale says. For women travellers, this journey means a long time away from their homes and city.

"When we leave our homes early to catch the train, our children are asleep and by the time we return, arriving at Pune by 8.30 m, and then reach our homes, the kids are barely awake," says Manju Shekhar, a regular traveller on Deccan Queen.

Weekends are the only time when she can be with her children, she says.

About 650-700 passengers holding passes travel daily, apart from ticket holders. "Rarely does the Deccan Queen fail us," says Tapale.

Little wonder that the train, named after the city of Poona, is affectionately called in Marathi as Dakkan chhi Raani which translates as the Queen of the Deccan. Though it was initially started as a weekend service only for the Britishers, the train got its full load of passengers only after Indians were allowed to travel, gradually turning into a daily service.