Most people like to watch the rain, watch a sunrise or sunset, watch wildlife, flowers etc. I like some of these activities watching nature or immersing myself in such, also, but I enjoy the ordinary pleasures of simple engineering and transportation also.
I enjoy riding in buses even when I own a car and can afford to take an auto or taxi. I enjoy traveling in trains. Especially in India. I dont mind that most of our trains are not as fast Japanese or Chinese bullet trains. Slowness is not that bad a feature in Indian trains, it helps us enjoy the countryside so much. Mile after mile of rice field and cotton field and lakes and rivers and canyons mountains, India is a pleasure to ride through, looking out the windows. Even when I travel in AC compartments, in trains, I sometimes stand in the corridor or near the door, the wind and dust whipping hair and skin - almost always there are open doors in most trains, except at night. We get dirty, but that happens anyway, wherever we travel.
Perhaps one of my stranger pleasures is simply watching trains sitting on a railway platform. Our family used to live in Mylapore and when we visited our chithi's family in KK Nagar, one of the delights was the ten seconds of the bus 12 E going over the Kodambakkam bridge and perhaps a fleeting glimpse at the trains running below. Sometimes we would take 12F (which later became 12G) which goes through Mambalam not Kodambakkam, and so we would sometimes watch a train cross the bridge on Brindavan street, and our bus would sometimes go under it. Loved the thunderous noise.
When we first moved to Kodambakkam, I was in class 12, and it was a thrill that I could cross the bridge every day on the way to my school in Royapettai. Either by bus or by bicycle. The first weekend, I actually took my kid brother and we simply went to the Kodambakkam railway station and sat on a bench on the platform for an hour or so watching trains go by.
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| Train on Madras-Gummidipoondi line near Chennai Central |
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| Triplicane cricket ground and Marina beach view from MRTS EMU |
Between 2000 and 2005 or so, when I had ambitions of becoming a writer, but couldnt complete anything I often went to Mambalam or some other suburban railway station in the evenings and simply sat on the bench, sometimes thinking, sometimes writing. I never became a writer, but enjoyed the moments on the railway platforms, watching people walk around, finishing their days or starting them.
I enjoy railway platforms as much as the beach or some riverside or lakeside. Perhaps very odd in a city with such a magnificent beach. Sometimes when I woke up early I would go early and simply watch trains. (Being a jobless bachelor was a major factor enabling such activities).
Since the advent of Youtube and the smartphone and extremely cheap and plentiful bandwidth, I now have the benefit of vast number of videos of similar minded people. In fact, out there in smaller towns across India, are hundreds perhaps thousands of train lovers with far more dedication and passion, who post videos. There are also aeroplane watchers who take videos of airplanes taking off and landing at various airports, but this is very difficult in India, as most airports are restricted and you can only watch such these while you are a passenger yourself. I enjoy watching planes land or take off and there are some fantastic videos of these also.
There are also train videos of travelers in different countries, and Youtube videos are a great way to discover how different each culture is. America and Europe have such thin populations, and Africa and South America have so few trains, they are not quite as fascinating.
But Indian trains and the kind of videos vloggers make are astounding. There are videos of trains merely arriving or leaving, of trains crossing platforms, people crossing railway tracks just ahead of trains, passenger trains racing, overtaking, zooming past, scenic routes, and so many other fascinating aspects of life and technology, There are viewers who study all the train locomotives and the sheds they are attached to (Erode, Royapuram, Itarsi, Vijayawada etc), their categories of WAP7, WAG5, WAM4 (where P,G,M stand for Passenger Goods and Mixed respectively; WDG WDP etc (D in the middle is diesel engine, A is AC engine); the W stands for broad guage, Meter guage trains had the letter Y. The Beach-Tambaram EMU line was converted from meter guage to broad guage about ten years back, almost the last of the meter guage trains in Tamilnadu. I rode those for nostalgia. The numbers at the end 4,5,7 etc stand for horsepower of the engines. 4 is 4000 HP, 7 is 7000 HP. Excitement prevails over the new 12000 HP engines of Indian Railways
All railway lines south of Madras - from Madras to Madurai and Kanyakumari or Tenkasi or Rameshvaram were meter guage in my college days. Only the railways to the west - Bangalore and Coimbatore - or to the north - Bombay and Delhi and such were broad guage before that. Some trains like those at Ooty and Darjeeling still run on narrow guage rails.
The level of their videography, the editing, labeling, fan following (even worldwide) is amazing. This is a world that most people dont know exists. One can see similar videos from other countries also, but like I said there are so few people in those stations or trains, except in very large central stations of cities like London or Paris, they are not as interesting. But one gets very amazing views.
There are some very popular but bizzare trains, from Thailand, Vietnam, and such countries, going through very narrow markets, between rows of housing, etc. There are weird morning commute trains in China and Japan where there are train packers who push people into trains. I think we may see such phenomena soon in India. I once showed such videos to some school kids in Konerirajapuram and they howled with delight. Perhaps you might like them too.
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