At 8.10 p.m. every night from Chennai Central, a slice of history leaves the Tamil Nadu plains and heads towards the Western coast. Mangaluru Mail is one of the oldest trains in Southern Railway and its original number was 1 with the return down trip numbered at 2.

Back then it was the Mangalore Mail before the Kannada twang caused a minor change in nomenclature. Having commenced operations in 1867, initially to Calicut (Kozhikode), the train moved all the way to Karnataka’s coastal town.