[vigsom]

Introduction

Just about a year after I took my first ride on the Mysuru - Chennai Vande Bharat Express, it was time to repeat the experience. This time, we decided to try the Executive Class. Bhpian @84.monsoon has covered a lot of features of the Executive Class on this train via
this post, and I'll try adding some dimensions which might not have been covered before. Here are two pics - one from my first ride and one from now - same shooter, same cam, same platform.

Nov-2022


Nov-2023

[vigsom]

First impressions of the Executive Class

Sensor actuated doors, wide lobby, cabin upkeep was all fine - in fact it was good to see the train being kept well even after a year. Now comes the new dimension I hinted in the first post. Among most passengers boarding the Executive Class coach, there was this air of sophistication with bombastic English, and along with bombastic English, I could clearly see an attitude to show that they own the train. This isn't an aberration. Here are some:

1. crowding around the entrance not giving way to alighting passengers
2. getting in casually without showing concern for other passengers behind
3. blocking the aisle and taking their own time to settle down unmindful of the inconvenience being caused to others
4. asking for wifi immediately on being seated
5. asking for the seats to be rotated

On the positive side, though, here are some good ones (some might be repeat observations)

Likes

• Supreme cleanliness and upkeep even a year later
• Blinds on the massive windows still work as intended
• Great wide cozy seats with additional with a velcro fastened foam pad which can be placed to one's convenience
• Flexi seats - move them around 360 degrees
• Emergency communication system
• Aircraft biz class style tray table is the best I've seen in an Indian train till date
• filling high tea
• CCTV cameras
• Smoke detectors
• Fire detectors and alarms
• Bio-vacuum toilet
• Jaquar taps on the washbasins

Dislikes

• Seat fabric might wear away with time
• on board wifi could not be used
• one side's electronic door opening switch in coach E1 wasn't working; got rectified later

[vigsom]

Experiencing Executive Class

I will let the pictures do the talking

Seatback - can store quite some stuff


Headrest foam pad - adjustable to suit passenger's head and height




Place the foam pad to suit one's head

Spectrawide footrest




Soft touch reading lights




Nice to see a wifi connection on board a train


which did not connect


Overhead rack


The 360 degree rotatable seat - gaze out of the windows or have a meeting, face in direction of the train or against it

[vigsom]

Experiencing Executive Class (Contd.)

Cabin view - still fresh after a year




Tray table


Eats offered on various sectors of this train


What was offered - more than adequate for this evening ride. In fact even gluttons would find this satiable


The coach lobby - no change from the AC Chair car coaches


Views of a washroom - clean and well kept except for that small wet patch. The dryer was also working




One door temporarily not electronically operable in coach E1

[vigsom]

My 2 cents

Is the Executive Class (EC) worth the extra cash? For me, no, unless one's undertaking an 8 hour journey by some Vande Bharat Express after a long hard day. For a short 4.5 hour journey, unless one is travelling as a family of four OR a group of 4 corporates who'd like to hold a meeting, the EC is just fancy. I also know that many corporates do not encourage rail travel, so the word "Executive" is just in print.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Train Man of Team BHP - Your enthusiasm for trains and the revival of the once great Indian Railways has been timed aptly. Keep them coming

I do hope I've lived up to this tag.

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[V.Narayan]

Another excellent thread by Vigsom the Train man. :-) Thank you for helping folks like me realize how much the Indian Railways has improved over the last few years. Eventually we need such high quality, day journey, high speed trains connecting every city pair of commercial consequence. When business folks in town A have direct connectivity to town B trade and commerce and hence GDP &employment are given a fillip. I'm not referring to the metros or mini- metros. Talk of Jabalpur to Jaipur or Aurangabad to Vijayawada. And of course trains consume way way less fuel and therefore create way less pollution than a airliner. Good for the planet in everyway. A Boeing 747-400 consumes about 3.1 litres per kms for every 100 passengers. According to a simple back of envelope calculation a diesel powered train would consume about ~5X less. Of course the speed of the 747 would be around 850 to 900 kmph while that of our train would be 100 to 140 kmph. For distances shorter than 400 kms as the crow flies speed should not matter.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by vigsom

What was offered - more than adequate for this evening ride. In fact even gluttons would find this satiable

Not exactly a glutton, but I beg to disagree on this statement on 2 levels

Pt 1. The food offered on VB (and other short distance trains these days I guess) is basically junk. As shown in the pic; the contents are
- A high sugar content juice box
- A sweet and mixture both high in sodium/salt and sugar content
- Tea offered is via the readymade mix that is much more worse off than the usual tea (in terms of sugar content again). Black tea option wasn't offered.
- Ironically I found the samosa most "healthy" of the lot (cashews/dry fruits packet wasn't offered to us/non-exec class seats).

Pt.2 A lesser aspect but relevant for some folks I'd think; the food being offered on VB is not exactly sufficient enough; unless
- one brings additional food
- one prepares in advance to eat prior to or post the journey

Also because of the combination of automatic closing doors & short halts, outside food / vendors are not seen inside the cabins. So on a recent trip from Bangalore to Mysore that started at 2.50pm and reached by 7:30 pm, we were hungry by 6 itself and thankfully survived due to some bananas we had stocked by chance. I'm not sure 100% but if my memory serves me right, the food option on the Shatabdi on the same route offers a bit more food than what VB offers.


Going forward (and I'd recommend this to others), I'm going to stick to food prepared from home - much healthier and more aligned to how I plan my food intake before, during and after the journey. Actually, that's always been the case in the past but I opted for food this trip. Not again.

Originally Posted by vigsom

Is the Executive Class (EC) worth the extra cash?

If someone's planning to work on his/her laptop during the trip, I'd say the extra cash makes sense. I found the Exec class much more quieter than the normal class.

[PreludeSH]

Thank you very much for sharing your experience.

I was reading yesterday about resurgence of what is called 'overnight train' in Europe.

For our country with major towns not so far off and practical to be connected with air, good trains make a lot of sense. We just need the will power and of course cleaner tracks (especially in train stations) . Thats something that needs to be done next.

[GoBabyGo]

Hi, I have been to Vande Bharat Express train from Delhi to Jammu & back twice in last one year, recent one is 3rd Nov & 6th Nov 2023 in Chair Car.

In my view the only difference I felt in Vande Bharat compared to Shatabdi Express is faster service response in case of complaint otherwise everything else felt very similar to Shatabdi & Rajdhani express train.

I feel that our tracks are not capable to handle fast trains and I do felt similar vibration & movement while standing (in toilet & around gate area) like Statabdi or Rajdhani trains. If given an opportunity, I would suspend train service for 6 months and completely change the tracks with the help of Japan or China or who so ever can do it in 6 months to ensure that our rail tracks are capable to handle 250kmph maximum speed easily.

Overall the experience in Vande Bharat train is not as good as it is advertised but the support response is much faster than we expect from Indian Railways.

[Jeroen]

Thanks for updating us on the train scene in India. It is good to see that these trains are very well maintained.

I have travelled by train in India, but in my Indians days it was nothing like this. Although the train services I have used were usually pretty good, there were a few issues as well. One them is similar to what I have experienced all over the world. Getting to and from a railway station can be a real pain. It is inherently a problem for a train connection. You simply can’t have station every 500 meter. For me the choice on how I will travel is usually about the whole trip, which means getting to and from the station, being able to park and so on.

The other thing is the incredible busy stations. With that come a lot of hustlers. Whenever we showed up at any station always a pack of folks demented upon us, offering to show us the way, carry our luggage, demanding to see our tickets and so on. We always said, we live here and know the way, thank you very much!

India has quite a heritage when it comes to trains. I always loved going to the Rewari heritage steam shed. Very different from making use of the train as a mode of transportation of course. But we still have very fond memories of our steam train journey as well!

Jeroen

[The Rationalist]

Definitely Vande Bharat is a step in the right direction. However the average speed of Vande Bharat in Kerala is 65km/hr. Once the NH 66 is functional I can reach my home faster than the train and at a similar cost! Mind you I'm talking about a single person in car.

The other trains have become delayed for the sake of Vande Bharat in Kerala. Maybe there's nothing much that can be done as the option for a 3rd track is almost impractical. Semi high speed or high speed trains are needed for a state like Kerala.

[subie_socal]

Originally Posted by The Rationalist

.
The other trains have become delayed for the sake of Vande Bharat in Kerala. Maybe there's nothing much that can be done as the option for a 3rd track is almost impractical. Semi high speed or high speed trains are needed for a state like Kerala.

That would remain until the routes have been upgraded with double tracks, which is the case in most parts.

[vigsom]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

- direct connectivity = trade and commerce are given a fillip
- trains consume way way less fuel and therefore create way less pollution than an airliner

True Sir. I hope the "sustainability" champions of various companies understand the power of point #2 above and encourage train travel over air, especially for the 400km type sectors. Most companies I know are happy with the air+ taxi modes and look weirdly at those taking trains

Originally Posted by PreludeSH

with major towns not so far off and practical to be connected with air, good trains make a lot of sense

Absolutely

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

food offered on VB (and other short distance trains) is junk

Agree; I've experienced trains for over 5 decades and personally don't find much has changed on the food front w.r.t offerings. I almost opt out of food on the Shatabdis, VBs and Tejas as it is a case of overloading oneself with too much of junk.

Yes, the only notable change is availability of food delivery options from private suppliers. Here again, quality is a hit or miss. A simple thing like tea or coffee without sugar is not available. In fact, one of the big issues with the railways is that sweet people (those with medical conditions), who constitute quite a large % have NO friendly food options. Even at stations, I'd say the most healthy food options one can choose from are idlis or poha (Poha again only a little midway through the country).

Originally Posted by GoBabyGo

the only difference I felt in Vande Bharat compared to Shatabdi Express is faster service response

Vande Bharat is marginally better than Shatabdi only w.r.t running time. As far as issue redressal is concerned, RailMadad has gone south; lesser said the better now.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

incredible busy stations.

True Sir. Post 2022, crowds have swelled back to pre covid levels and it actually seems like vengeance with interest.

Originally Posted by The Rationalist

The other trains have become delayed for the sake of Vande Bharat in Kerala

That's the unfortunate part when a)one train gets a very high degree of preferential treatment and b)others aren't spaced apart suitably enough. Only last week, I was doing Vadodara -Surat by Shatabdi Exp after 12 years. The train just ahead of this was 16209 Ajmer Mysore Exp. Both trains have a running time of 1hr35mins between Vadodara and Surat. Yet 16209 was halted at Nabipur to give way to the Shatabdi.

[thanixravindran]

Originally Posted by vigsom

My 2 cents

Is the Executive Class (EC) worth the extra cash? For me, no

Not specific to VB but I guess at least there existed a small clientele for EC in Shatabdhi. Single women or women travelling alone with kids prefer EC - Less crowded, no jostling with middle seat gentlemen or walkers (read starers) and as you mentioned bombastic English speaking crowd. It may sound elitist but my wife used to have these reasons for preferring it during her MAS-SBC Shatabdhi days (6 years ago) as these reasons translate to better privacy. And in the few occasions I travelled with her in EC, I can confirm positively about her EC crowd observations in that route.