The green-liveried DEMU currently shuttles twice a day in the morning and evening hours between CHT, located on Willingdon Island home to the Cochin Port Trust and the Southern Naval Command of the Indian Navy, and Ernakulam Junction, the principal railway station serving Kochi.
The sun had begun to set over the Arabian Sea on Monday evening by the time the three-coach Diesel Electrical Multiple Unit (DEMU) train honked to signal its departure from the Cochin Harbour Terminus (CHT) station. A couple of minutes past 5 pm — its scheduled departure time, the train had lingered on for just a bit at the station, waiting for two men, in their 50s, as they huffed and puffed and clambered onto one of its coaches at the last minute.
Normally a train wouldn't wait for two ordinary passengers even a minute, but this particular train can certainly afford to. For unlike its peers, it doesn't have miles to go before it can rest. It's destination is just nine kilometres away — a distance it traverses in 40 minutes with one stoppage, lending this DEMU train the unique distinction of being the country's shortest railway service. What's more, on Monday evening, when it began its service from…
