about us

The Thundering Hyderabadis

This site started as a collective effort of three railfans Gautam Parthsarathy, Lakshman T and Shashanka Nanda. We met through the IRFCA mailing list during the time we were based in Hyderabad.

The first meeting took place at the Maula Ali station just outside the main city. An early morning session that lasted well into the afternoon signalled the start of a wonderful friendship and many delightful moments over the years. Sometime later, Shashanka  moved into an apartment overlooking the picturesque Hussain Sagar Lake with a panoramic view of the railway network around the lake. From then on, his balcony and the trackside around the lake were the location of many memorable evenings of railfanning, MSTS sessions, accompanied by liters & liters of Tang & beer.

This site contains many pictures from those wonderful moments together, and from our individual travels across various different parts of the country. Our adventures along the tracks were noticed even by the ‘Times of India’, which featured us in its Hyderabad edition. A copy of the article can be seen here.

Lakshman T posing beside a Plasser track maintenance machine at Khairatabad station. A sound engineer by profession, Lakshman grew up in Hyderabad when with MG and BG both for company. A rabid railfan right from the start, he used to force his mother to take him to the railway station after school so that he could sit there and watch trains go by.

Electric traction came to Hyderabad right in front of his eyes, and he spent countless evenings watching the electrification masts come up and he used hitch ride with the staff on the WDS4 shunters employed during the conversions. Inspite of his love for electrics, the venerable WDM2 remains close to his heart as well.

Currently, he is working in Bangalore with an animation studio.

Gautam Parthasarathy or GP as he is better known is another hardcore railfan. Pictured here at Hyderabad station’s electric loco trip shed against Lalaguda’s star WAP4s, GP grew up in Indore watching the last of steam go by. After finishing his engineering, he enrolled in the prestigious Indian Institute of Management at Lucknow, while his family moved to their hometown in Chennai.

Thus began the ritual of catching the Pushpak from Lucknow to Jhansi and from there catching the famous GT or TN expresses to Chennai. Many of his pictures from those journeys are featured in the site. Finishing his course at IIM-L he joined a software firm in Hyderabad from where he moved abroad for a short stint in the UK.

Currently based in Chennai, he is working as an analyst in a software firm.

Shashanka ‘shanx’ Nanda is an adrenaline junkie. Speed thrills him no end. Ever since he was  3 months old... he has been travelling between Delhi & Nellore; his maternal hometown. Born in a family of railfans & a grandparent’s home 500m away from the tracks was just the right recipie to aggravate the disease.

After finishing graduation in Delhi, he moved to Bombay where trains were a way of life. Work saw him shuttle between Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad & Mumbai. All this invloved meant tonnes of train travel for work & pleasure, all of which has been snapped up gleefully for this site.

At present, he is working as a Public Relations Consultant in Hyderabad.