Kudos to whoever is maintaining the Surat kitchen for the delicious food.
BHPian porsche_guy recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
I also managed to take the orange VB from Borivali to Vadodara just a few days after you and I do concur with most of your observations.
The seatbacks especially I feel are inferior to the white VB. They do look cleaner but the full length makes you feel more claustrophobic and hemmed in plus there’s tons of space on them which went unused and could have easily accommodated a cupholder, larger tray table and even a smartphone holder like one sees on Vistara and some Akasa flights. Compared to that you just have one massive slab of grey metal.
The seats are fairly comfortable but they are flat and hard and I imagine those will get uncomfortable over longer journeys. Somehow I also felt that the aisles at the ends of coaches are easier to move about and slightly more spacious as well. Finally, the snacks provided were average but the dinner was fantastic. Kudos to whoever is maintaining the Surat kitchen for the delicious food. I also noticed a distinct uptick in the service levels, now I don’t know if it was this particular set of staff but they were fairly prompt and kept checking in on the passengers every few minutes along with helping the elderly stow their baggage and retrieve it.
I think this is as good as it gets from a government organisation and there is scope for improvement too but those are minor things that won’t make much difference. Now the next focus IMO should be on making the platforms better. 4.30 pm in peak Mumbai heat was nothing short of torture and Borivali should have a dedicated platform for outstation trains along with an AC waiting room large enough to accommodate people.
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