History of the train:
The main introduction of this train was to get back the Chennai-Bangalore Mail back to its primary maintainence station of Chennai Central instead of idiling the whole day at Bangalore City.Would leave Bangalore city at 6:30AM to reach Chennai at 1:45 PM. Return journey the train would come Chennai Bangalore Express leaving Chennai in afternoon(1:00PM) and reaching Bangalore at night(around 8:30PM) in the early 1990's. It was the day time train that had Sleeper and 2A coaches. But only 3 SL were reserved the remaining being Unreserved....
more... One of the Unreserved coaches of Mail was a seating reservation coach for this train (S-3 coach)
Around 1995 Lalbagh Express came into existence. Used to leave at 8:30AM t0 reach Chennai at 2PM with just 2 stops enroute. Later both the trains exchanged timings with Lalbagh leaving at 6:30 to reach Chennai at 12 and in return leaving chennai at 4PM to reach Bangalore at 9:30PM. Express timings was changed to leave Bangalore at 8AM to reach Chennai at 3PM the return journey not changed.
In 1999 April The Rake share was changed. Both Mail and Express shifted to Bangalore division owing to which the RSA was changed between Express and Lalbagh and the same continues till today. Mail shared rakes with Karnataka Express which too belongs to Bangalore division. In 2006 both Mail and Express were converted to superfast owing to speeding up of timings.