OFFLINK: Crawler Express Crawls Out Of SHM With Mughalsarai WAP4

Coming out of SHM | © Soumo's Railways

Actually this was supposed to be the first update for the October 21st spotting, as this train, 18030, was first spotted before the 22641 Thiruvananthapuram Shalimar Express came in (read my last blog post here); but anyway I am writing about this now. Honestly I was only expecting to spot the 22641, and 18030 was actually not in my mind. I did note that 18029 already arrived at SHM before I arrived at the spotting area; and I almost forgot that 18030 is scheduled to leave SHM at around 1500, as I was waiting for 22641 which was almost about 2 hours late. As I wrote in my last blog post that I had to abandon a rf session earlier that morning due to heavy rain, but got a chance to do some quick spottings later in the afternoon.

MGS Mughalsarai WAP4 hauling 18030 | © Soumo's Railways

So the 18030 Shalimar - Mumbai Lokmanya Tilak Terminus Kurla Express was found crawling out of Shalimar. To my knowledge, the train is reputed to be a notoriously slow mover, stopping at a lot of stations between Shalimar and LTT Terminus of Mumbai. For this reason it has hard earned the reputation of being SER's Crawler King!

Making an offlink, the loco hauling the train was a MGS - Mughalsarai WAP4 locomotive. It was so nice to see the Mughalsarai WAP4. A Mughalsarai loco was spotted by me at Shalimar after a long time. Mostly MGS-Mughalsarai WAG7 locos come in to this station. You can check my Youtube for sightings of Mughalsarai locos (click here). BTW it is already news that Mughalsarai Junction is renamed as 'Deen Dayal Upadhaya Nagar', which has given birth to several controversies.

You can watch the video of the train leaving Shalimar Railway Station at the video thumbnail/ link mentioned below:

Unfortunately I am scheduled to board this same train (18029) from Nagpur later next month. I made tickets on this train as other trains like, especially the 'Mumbai - Howrah mail' (which was my first choice) had no tickets even at mid of October. So maybe you all can send me your sympathies for my journey on this crawler express. Anyway I am happy that I will be arriving at my home station after a long trip scheduled next month.

Here is the RF data:

Towards PDPK | © Soumo's Railways

Date: October 21 2017

Place: Near PDPK - Padmapukur Railway Station.

Zone (Spotting location): SER - South Eastern Railway
Loco: MGS Mughalsarai WAP4 no. 22815
Loco Shed: MGS - Mughalsarai
Loco Zone: ECR East Central Railway
Train: Outbound 18030 Shalimar - Mumbai Lokmanya Tilak Terminus Express.

BTW I am happy to be back on Instagram. I will resume making updates there. Thank you so much for the continued support.

Thanks for stopping by. As always, corrections, comments, suggestions new ideas, travel tips (or anything) are very much welcome and appreciated.

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