Newspaper adverts announcing the birth of the Coromandel Express in 1977 to the world gave all indications that it was a star product even before it started operations. “Instead of 32.35 hours taken by the Madras Mail, this train will take 25 hours to complete its journey,” the advert Yugantar, a Bengali newspaper, announced.
“The train is totally vestibuled to enable serving of meals from the pantry car,” it said, as a USP of the new train, telling the world about the “first inter-city bi-weekly train” that started on March 6, 1977 from Madras and March 7 from Howrah.
Long before the word was coined, the Coromandel Express was already pegged as an “overnighter”, offering the latest in comfort and speed that Indian Railways — still trying to graduate from its Colonial legacy of steam engines — had to offer. By 1977, the Rajdhani was running successfully between, say, Howrah and Delhi. The Coromandel was all but the “Rajdhani” of the coastal route, minus the name. For starters, the train had a library.
“My parents were pleasantly surprised to find a library as part of the bouquet of facilities aboard the new train,” says Souroshankha Maji, a researcher and rail heritage enthusiast whose lecturer parents, Saroj and Debani, were among the first batch of passengers on the Coromandel Express in 1977.
The dining car served delectable dishes, although not as part of the ticket, like the Rajdhani. Over time, the AC coaches also started showing movies on board through video cassettes.
The Coromandel Express started on March 6, 1977, from Madras and March 7 from Howrah. CREDIT: Shashanka Nanda/IRFCA Sep 2004
“Before the Coromandel, there was no premium product other than the Rajdhani. So everything about it was designed to be one — the timings, the speed, the amenities, everything,” says Sanjoy Mookerjee, a 1978-batch officer of the Indian Railway Accounts Service, who retired as Financial Commissioner of the Railway Board in 2016.
Starting around the evening from Howrah, the train would reach Vizag early in the morning, so that people working in industrial hubs like the Vizag Steel Plant and Visakhapatnam Port could use it as a viable transport option from Calcutta. Medical tourists and those who wanted to go to Bangalore from Madras were its target customers. People from Bengal going to Tamil Nadu for treatment were also target customers. Aspirants of engineering seats through the KCET were also targeted and so on.
Nearly 25 years ago, the library on Coromandel Express was replaced by a Railway official carrying a trunk full of books that could be borrowed to read on the train. CREDIT: Shashanka Nanda/IRFCA Sep 2004
The train would reach Madras in the evening, so that people on the way to Kerala, Karnataka and other parts of Tamil Nadu did not have to wait too long for a connecting train. The Coromandel was designed like that. In fact, trains like the Yesvantpur-Howrah Superfast came to fill the vacuum later on as bi-weeklies, so that people could travel between the two cities directly.
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After the rail tragedy on June 2, which killed 275 people, first Coromandel Express from Shalimar to
Chennai passes through the rail tragedy site and Bahanaga Bazar railway station.
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The train left on its usual route from Shalimar in West Bengal to the Tamil Nadu capital, carrying around 1,500 jittery travellers.
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On Wednesday, the 23-bogey train had 1,477 confirmed passengers, plus the excess crowd in the general compartment.
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The train that connects four states — West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu — is the preferred way to commute for migrant labourers as well as people seeking medical treatment in South India.
“These trains were launched as new-age products of Railways, as alternatives to the popular trains of the Colonial era. On that route, the Coromandel was an alternative to the Madras Mail. Around the same time, the Gitanjali Express was launched as a new, faster alternative to the Bombay Mail between Bombay and Howrah,” says Shri Prakash, a 1971-batch officer of the Indian Railway Traffic Service, who retired as Railway Board Member (Traffic) in 2009.
The train, which was supposed to only make an operations/technical halt in Kharagpur, was eventually made to halt there as a commercial stoppage. “Students from IIT started boarding and deboarding there, giving zonal railways the idea that this was a major catchment area,” says Mookerjee.
The birth and evolution of trains like the Coromandel Express tell the story of the evolution of Indian Railways and in a way, how India travels.
Such was the popularity of the Coromandel Express, or “Coro” as it was popularly called, that two railway zones — Eastern and South Eastern — started fighting for its earnings in Kharagpur. “The stop in Kharagpur was formalised after that,” he says. Somewhere down the line, it also became a daily train, which it remains to this day. And that is how the train remained. A cash cow and a star product of South Eastern Railway.
“When Lalu Yadav started the Tatkal scheme, the Coromandel was the only train in India which had a Tatkal coach attached for every class. Because the demand justified it,” says Trayambak Ojha of the Indian Railways Fan Club (IRFC), the largest global collective of India’s rail enthusiasts.
“By the time I started taking the train around 25 years ago, to travel between my college in Chennai and home in Kolkata, the library had been replaced by a Railway official carrying a trunk full of books which you could borrow to read on the train. It was its hallmark,” he says. “The popularity was such that for its departure at 5 pm or so, general class passengers would start crowding platform number 14 of Howrah since morning.”
Old-timers recall how the train changed with time, but not its appeal. “By the beginning of the millennium, the dining car was gone, but its food was still a hit. The pantry served a very popular fried rice-chilli chicken combo. During the bird flu scare around 2000, they replaced the chilli chicken with chilli fish, and it was still a hit,” Ojha says.
The Coromandel started becoming like just other popular trains when the Railways started standardisation of rakes. There were to be only three types of trains — the Rajdhani, the Shatabdi and everything else, like the Coromandel.
Its popularity forced the Railways to increase its halts at Bhadrak, Balasore, Khurda Road, Brahmapur. This increased its run time by three hours. A few years ago, it was taken off Howrah platforms and made to run to and from the nearby Shalimar station. And that is how it remained, as it lay in Odisha. Just another train, derailed.
Long before the word was coined, the Coromandel Express was already pegged as an "overnighter", offering the latest in comfort and speed that Indian Railways — still trying to graduate from its Colonial legacy of steam engines — had to offer. 
The Coromandel Express started on March 6, 1977, from Madras and March 7 from Howrah. CREDIT: Shashanka Nanda/IRFCA Sep 2004
Nearly 25 years ago, the library on Coromandel Express was replaced by a Railway official carrying a trunk full of books that could be borrowed to read on the train. CREDIT: Shashanka Nanda/IRFCA Sep 2004
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