Full Journey on India's Fastest Duronto: Dhanbad-Sealdah (With Rajdhani Overtake)

The final leg of the 270 kilometre journey between Dhanbad and Sealdah aboard the 12260 New Delhi Sealdah is presented in this compilation.The Ghaziabad WAP7 whips up a good pace with Duronto through the final legs of Jharkhand and soon, we are flying through Kumardhubi and thundering across the Barakar River to enter West Bengal at a blistering pace.
We crawl through Asansol but halt right after clearing the platform. I initially felt it was a temporary halt for signal clearance but soon, we had passed over 5 minutes. One of the train staff reported that there was a minor fire in the brake shoe of the locomotive which had been spotted by one of the gangmen and work was in progress to mend that issue. I peered my head out of the window to see a large number of people gathered around the locomotive. As I was ascertaining the situation, a shrill honk alerted me to the presence of a WAP7 in the background. I turned my head to see a Ghaziabad WAP7 on the adjacent line, slowly moving past our Duronto and honking loudly. It was the 12306 Howrah Rajdhani Express (via Patna) which was taking advantage of our loco failure and overtaking us, replete with three first AC coaches and a spare AC 2 tier at the back, making it a 21 coach formation. It seemed there was sufficient camaraderie between the staff of the two trains as many of them exchanged loud greetings with each other.
It took us another 15 minutes after the Rajdhani's overtake to get going. The 41 kilometre Asansol-Durgapur is filled with countless speed restrictions due to the deleterious effects of illegal coal mining, resulting in indifferent speeds. My train capturing skills were also being indifferent at this point as I missed a number of major trains including the Black Diamond Express, Poorva and the Double Decker Express. What I captured in the bargain was the Dibrugarh Chennai Express and the Sealdah Muzaffarpur Fast Passenger, which definitely not enough compensation.
The Duronto picked up pace after Durgapur and flew through the rice bowl of Bengal. In no time, we had entered Bardhaman and after the customary slow passage through platform 5 and the mandatory track switch onto the reversible track of the Bardhaman Howrah Chord, were were again thundering towards Dankuni at 130 kmph flat, paying absolutely no heed to the smaller stations enroute. Our frenetic run was interrupted only at Dankuni after we covered 81 kilometres in a mere 40 minutes: here we switched tracks and headed towards Sealdah.
The Dankuni-Dum Dum stretch is a rather unstable stretch as the tracks are not the firmest in this area resulting in sub-optimal speeds. The Duronto today was completely unfazed and hurtled past the Grand Trunk Road (National Highway 2) and blazed across the Hooghly (Ganga) river at 100 kmph through the Vivekananda Bridge at Dakshineshwar. In all my years of travel (20 years or so) in this area, I have never experienced such speed and aggression as I did on this day. The Duronto was not finished yet as we stormed into Dum Dum, where the section controllers played their little game and ensured we entered Sealdah only at 1, 35 minutes delayed (30 minutes was due to out halt at Asansol), bringing a closure to a fine journey on what was then (2012) India's fastest train.