My friend and I traveled on the 12042 from NJP to HWH on March 2. I was very impressed by the priority given to this train, the overall run, maintenance and service. Our Executive Chair car coach was very clean and the occupancy was around 30%. The food - breakfast and lunch - was delicious. The run till Barddhaman was just awesome - just two minutes late with only one unscheduled halt at Mallarpur, where we overtook Tebhaga Exp. We skipped Barddhaman at a slow pace and then ended-up trailing the Patna Janshatabdi right till Howrah. This resulted in a 15-minute delay and we pulled into Howrah at 1.50 pm. Only at Howrah did I realize that our loco was a dual-cab WDP4D from Siliguri shed.
Only...
more... one incident blemished my experience and that had nothing to do with IR. Somewhere near Pakur, I heard a loud thud on my window and realized that some worthless idiot had thrown a stone. It ended-up creating a large crack on the outer glass but did not shatter the window - Thank God! I was really peeved by this incident and would have dearly loved to catch the culprit. I was told by an attendant that it would take Rs. 30000 to replace it! Now someone stepping into that coach at Howrah and spotting the cracked window would have probably blamed it on the poor maintenance of NFR. He would have no clue about the brat responsible for it. Made me wonder - IR's image is only as good as the people using it and near it!