Took 12314 Sealdah Rajdhani till Durgapur on 16 Dec 2019 in 3 AC. Firstly due to delayed arrival of the 12313 UP train, the subsequent DN train was delayed by 2 hours. But ultimately it left New Delhi at 1900 hours. I was looking forward to good service. But everything shattered when the evening snacks was given to us. Here I am uploading a pic of that evening snack. First of all the Sandwich is not there. Upon asking the serving staff told me that it was stopped long ago and along with it is the soup and the welcome drink. And the most weird thing which I observed was unlike other Rajdhani trains where the staff gives thermos for tea/coffee, here they came with tray full of glass with hot water. And not to tell many of the cups were already not so hot. But for morning bed tea, they...
more... did provided us with the thermos..
Fast forward when for dinner I ordered Non Veg-Egg Curry. For the Dn train there are four options for dinner. Veg, Non Veg-Chicken, Non Veg-Egg and Jain Thali. The food provided was awesome and was of good standard quality. Atleast in this the standard was maintained.
Sealdah Rajdhani has quite a number of passengers boarding and de- boarding at Durgapur. Thus what they try to do is that they try to skip the breakfast for them. But the weird thing is that Railways charges the same catering charge for passenger of Durgapur and Sealdah, i.e Rs.245, and while for Asansol passenger it is Rs.175. But since the train was running late, they were forced to give the breakfast. But they gave it when the train was passing via Durgapur Coke Oven. For breakfast passenger have three options. Non Veg-Omelette, Non Veg-Boiled Egg and Veg Cutlet. In breakfast they provided us with Bread, Butter, Bourbon Chocolate, Omelette and Tea kit. The food quality was awesome.
I was in B7. The rake was Swarna Standard. But only for AC First Class and AC 2 Tier. The OBHS did a very good work, in short excellent in maintaining the cleanliness of the coach and the toilet. Meanwhile for using the lavatory I once went to the B8. Thanks god my seat wasn't there. That coach was old, rusty and least maintained. The worst were the lavatories.
Regarding running. The train was already late by 2 hours 35 minutes when it left NDLS. But since the train was already late, it wasn't able to capture the time it lost between NDLS and CNB. The same happened till Prayagraj(Allahabad). But from there to MGS and till Dhanbad, it was able to capture much of its time. When we were crossing Koderma, train was delayed by 1 hours 40 minutes. But thanks to poor controlling at Gomoh. We were again back on delay, but this time it was 2 hours 5 minutes. In between due to delay was able to takeover Poorva Express and Mahabodhi as well at MPS.
So if I have to rate at food, I will say it is 3/5. For cleanliness 4/5( For my coach) and for running it will be 4.5/5.
