MUMBAI: Punjab Mail, the oldest train in Indian Railways completes 109 years and steps into 110th year on 1.6.2021. Though passenger train services were suspended during the Covid-19 lockdown from March 22, 2020, gradually the services were reintroduced as special trains after unlock from 1.5.2020. However, Punjab Mail special began its journey with LHB coaches from 1.12.2020. The LHB coaches give more safety and pleasant travelling experience to the passengers.
The origins of the Bombay to Peshawar Punjab Mail are rather unclear. Based on a Cost Estimate paper circa 1911 and a complaint by an irate passenger circa October 12, 1912 about the ‘late arrival of the train by a few minutes at Delhi’, it has been more or less inferred that the Punjab Mail made her maiden run out of Ballard Pier Mole station on 1 June 1912. Punjab Mail is over 16 years older than the more glamorous Frontier Mail.