Train spotting

Progress was slow until Thane, mostly to make way for the local trains which get preference over long distance trains around Mumbai.

I do not know if there was a scheduled stop at Thane but we were there for over 15 minutes. After Diva Junction we took off southwards, towards Panvel and beyond.

Train lovers will dig the stretch from Thane to Panvel, as it's a great place to watch trains and locomotives from all over India.

It is at this spot that tracks converge from all over: the trains from Bhor Ghat and Pune, the connecting line between Gujarat and Vasai and South India, the line that goes to Mumbai and the connecting line to JNPT (Mumbai's new port).

Watch out for the behemoth electric locomotives, some that belong to the faraway Eastern Railways, resting after having pulled in the super-fast container trains from Kolkata and whereabouts.

They look very different from the ones we see around Mumbai.

You also have lots of locomotives from the south (Ernakulam and Erode), besides the ones from the Central Railway's Pune and Kalyan sheds.

How do you identify the originating sheds of these locomotives? It is fairly simple.

For diesel locomotives, you have the name of the shed that houses the locomotive prominently written in the front, often accompanied by the shed's beautiful logo.

For instance, the Ernakulam shed has a traditional Kerala snake boat as its icon!

The electric trains have tamer designs, with their brute force probably making up for their lack of colour. But they do have the name of the shed plainly stencilled on their bodies.