Lallaguda’s Offlink WAP4 with the Venad Express!
Offlink Lallaguda WAP4 #22214 speeds past Vaikom Road with the 16302 Thiruvananthapuram – Shoranur Venad Express in tow on an insanely hot morning with the greenery of central Kerala in the background. An offlink, in railfan terms, is a locomotive that is not the regularly assigned one for a train. Offlinks create tremendous excitement among railfans. In this case, the magenta-ish red locomotive is the same class (WAP4) that hauls the Venad, but from a different shed. Lallaguda is in Hyderabad. Note the mid-mounted headlamps of the electric locomotive. Most WAP4s now have their headlamps mounted on top. The straight, long shadow cast on the locomotive and train was that of my KCVL Garib Rath which was pulled over to let the late running Venad pass.
