My travel on the chennai nizamuddin duranto express on the 29th of october was made special with regard to the ongoing race which we had with the chennai nzm rajdhani all the way through until nizamudding. We departed at 6:45 am in the morning 5 mts behind schedule and we just crawled all the way until sullurupeta , the overall speed was just moderate not befitting a duranto but we managed to reach vijayawada at around 1245 and we stopped there for 10 minutes. One thing i want to bring into notice is that the duranto stops has many unschedule stops just like the sampark kranthi which should be avoided in the future although crew change and filling water cannot be taken as an exception. All the way we just maintained a moderate speed following behind the raj until this point at uppal station (Just after warangal in the kzj-balharshah line), We just picked up an incredible speed all of a sudden i just lazed around and went outside from my 2nd ac coach to take some videos i found to my dismay/surprise that we overtook the raj at this point and the wap7 driver waving the flag at us paving the way for the overtake. I was like woww at this point and we just blasted from here un til balharshah (stopped here for 5 mts) . I just went to sleep after we reached nagpur at around 10 20pm (at this point we were late by more than 1 hour). I just had a good sleep and i woke up around 710 am in the morning and by that time we had reached datia just after jhansi where we stopped for a while, i thought that we had stopped here for a signal clearance, bust again to my shock and dismay from inside my ac compartment i found the wap7 hauled raj with blaring horns overtake us with inciredible speed. This was called as tit for tat , a race of thunder between the 2 power horses of Indian Railways. We finally reached nizamuddin at 1150 pm late by 1 hr and 15 mts clinging behind the raj from datia all the way. I had taken some great videos and pics which i shall post in IRTS or at you tube. I had also visited the National Rail museum (for the nth time) and the Rewari steam heritage shed (for the 1st time) which was also a memorable experience. I just returned home today to chennai by the 2622 at 8am late by 50 mts (I had taken some high speed videos on board). I shall post all the videos shortly.
