Kerala Express: King of Precedence

Location: Mannanur railway station, 5KM away from Shoranur Jn,Kerala. Time: 3rd January 2015 06:32PM Erode (ED) WAP4 hauled 12625 Thiruvananthapuram Central-New Delhi Kerala Superfast Express overtaking 66612 Ernakulam Jn-Palakkad Jn MEMU. Kerala Express is the longest running daily Superfast train in India and also holds the record for the longest electric engine hauled train between New Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram Central. It is also called King of Overtakes because it overtakes almost every train in its route except for Rajdhanis and Shatabdis. It was introduced in the year 1976 as Kerala-Karnataka Express (KK Express) starting from New Delhi to Trivandrum and Bangalore, with bifurcation at Jolarpettai Jn. In 1980, it was split into two trains, Kerala Express and Karnataka Express with Kerala Express again split at Palghat Jn and one of the portions diverted to Mangalore. It overlapped with the Jayanti Janata which bifurcated at Shoranur with one part of the train going to Cochin Harbour and the other to Mangalore. Later, these two trains were merged to form the Kerala Mangala Express. In 1990, after a separate train to Mangalore was introduced, it began to run along its present route. It was a non daily train initially and had shared the same time slot with the Tamil Nadu Express, Andhra Pradesh Express and the Karnataka Express. However, after its conversion into a daily train it received its own time slot.