The Chennai Beach-Tambaram meter gauge EMU is replaced by the broad gauge fatty. Now to see her, you have to go to the Rail Museum at Chanakyapuri, New Delhi (where her original version with the Aluminium white colour is on display). She was a slim beauty with the white saree (aluminium white paint) during my childhood and it is very nostalgic to think of her. Now she is yellow and red but still a beauty. When I was a kid I used to accompany my father into her green-seated first class compartment, where my father chats in his railway jargon to other railway men. But I enjoyed her more when I was in my college, the daily 45 minutes travel from Chetput to Tambaram (college) in the morning and back in the evening. During my childhood she used to run off peak hours as “single”, 4 cars only unit – making passengers run to the middle part of the platform to get in , but now even her 8-cars unit is really not sufficient for Chennai’s crowd. She was not like her Mumbai counterpart, the crowds were not so mad but I heard that she was being mis-used like her Mumbai sister in Chennai too nowadays.
See her photograph in the website of Indian Railway fans:
https://irfca.org/~jayb/chennai/MG_EMU3.jpg
She is always adorned with advertisements of co-operative banks, local showrooms, LIC and family planning advertisements on the upper sides. Don’t touch her outside walls as she carries most of the betel spits too. The second class had curved down plywood seats and usually 3 people sit in 2 seats. The broad doorways are usually for squatters on the off-side (the side which does not expect a platform). It is better not to sit if you are going to get off within the next 3 stops and she stops only for a few seconds in each place. The ladies-only service during peak hours was introduced about 10 years ago only. I know of people who take a day off from office just because the “Mount Return” (Beach to St.Thomas Mount to Beach) was cancelled on that day. Worse, I know of college guys not going to college, just because a particular dame is not in the train during the expected time.
The usual time was about 1 hour and 10 minutes from Beach to Tambaram. Most city stations are reached by a 3 minute run from the previous. The longest strip was Meenambakkam to Pallavaram. The Thirusulam railway station was not there before. During my childhood the Palavanthangal railway station was also not there. The stations presently are Beach, Fort, Park, Egmore, Chetput, Nungambakkam, Kodambakkam, Mambalam, Saidapet, Guindy, St.Thomas Mount, Palavanthangal, Menambakkam, Thirusulam, Pallavaram, Chromepet, Tambaram Sanatorium and Tambaram. Best sights on the way are the Rippon building, Egmore main station, St.Andrews Kirk at Egmore, MCC school grounds and Pachayappa’s college grounds at Chetput, Loyola college at Nungambakkam, jam-packed Ranganathan street at Mambalam, SPIC building and King’s institute at Guindy, St. Thomas mount itself, hillocks and quarries at Pallavaram, Jain college Meenambakkam and MIT Chromepet.
As railway trespassing is not taken seriously in India, railway track crossing is a regular affair, and she has punished many trespassers with death sentences everyday. Adieu to you, my meter-gauge “electric train” (her name as called locally in Chennai).