45UP Meets 12DN: When Pakistan Express Crossed Hazara Express at Multan Cantt
When Pakistan Express Crossed Hazara Express at Multan Cantt
Ask any railfan what moment makes their heart skip and they will give you the same answer: a dual action — two trains, side by side, moving in opposite directions, passing each other in a roar of horns and headlights. It lasts seconds. It takes hours of patience to catch. And at nearly one in the morning at Multan Cantt, we caught a beauty: 45UP Pakistan Express rolling in behind GEU-40 locomotive No. 9001, crossing 12DN Hazara Express as the two thundered past each other under the platform lights.
1 What Exactly Is a Dual Action?
If you are new to railway filming, here is the concept that keeps veterans on platforms until 1 AM. A dual action happens when two trains occupy adjacent tracks at the same time and move past each other — one arriving, one departing, or both on the run. For a few electrifying seconds, the world narrows to noise, light, and wind: two headlights converging, two horns sounding off, two rakes of coaches flashing past in opposite directions, and then — silence, or at least the normal station quiet.
They are hard to film on purpose. You need two trains, two adjacent tracks, and timing that lines up to the second. Timetables say one thing; the railway says another. Most dual actions are pure luck — you are filming one train and the universe delivers a second one as a bonus. That is exactly what happened to us at Multan Cantt. We were tracking the Pakistan Express coming in, and the Hazara Express decided to make it a double.
The train we came for. 45UP is the northbound working of the Pakistan Express, one of the country’s flagship expresses on the main line. On this run it was hauled by GEU-40 locomotive No. 9001, its high beam cutting a white blade through the midnight dark as it approached Multan Cantt.
The train the universe sent. 12DN is the southbound working of the Hazara Express. It arrived on the adjacent track at exactly the wrong — or exactly the right — moment, turning a routine night approach into a full dual action.
2 The Approach: GEU-40 No. 9001 Comes In Hot
Before the crossing came the approach, and it was worth the wait on its own. A GEU-40 at night is a sight you never get tired of — the big General Electric diesels are among the heaviest haulers Pakistan Railways owns, and when one is working hard you can feel it in your chest before you can see it. First came the distant horn, rolling across the sleeping yards. Then the headlight: a single white star that grew and grew until it lit up the rails, the ballast, the mist hanging low over the tracks.
No. 9001 came in with intent. You could read the speed in the way the coaches streamed behind it — windows warm with light, passengers silhouetted at doorways, the whole rake taut and purposeful. This is the part of the video where you lean closer to your screen, because you can tell something is about to happen. The platform lamps reflected off the locomotive’s flank as it passed under the canopy, and for a breath, everything was perfect.
And then the second headlight appeared.
3 The Crossing: Seconds of Thunder
The Hazara Express came in from the opposite direction on the next track over, and the physics of the moment took over. Two long rakes, side by side, closing at the combined speed of both trains. The sound doubles — not louder in a simple way, but deeper, layered, the two engines’ rhythms overlapping into something that feels like it is coming from inside your own ribs. Between the trains, the slipstream becomes a wall of wind; on the platform, you can feel it tug at your clothes.
Watch our video frame by frame and you will see what the human eye barely registers in real time: the headlights converging, then passing; the moment the two locomotives draw level; the coaches flashing past each other, window by window, like two film strips running in opposite directions. Passengers on both trains lean to the windows — everyone loves a meet. For the crews, it is routine. For everyone watching, it is the best show on the railway.
Then it is over. The Hazara Express is gone south, the Pakistan Express rolls on into the station, and the platform exhales. A dual action is the railway’s version of a solar eclipse: brief, unrepeatable in exactly the same way, and worth every minute you waited for it.
4 The Machines: Why the GEU-40 Owns the Night
The GEU-40s deserve their own paragraph, because they are the reason this footage looks and sounds the way it does. These General Electric-built diesels are the muscle of Pakistan Railways’ modern fleet — big, heavy, and honest machines that spend their lives dragging long express rakes up and down the main line. At night, everything about them is amplified: the turbo whine under load, the way the high beam turns falling dust and mist into a visible cone, the sheer presence of that broad, squared-off nose filling the frame.
No. 9001 is one of the fleet’s familiar numbers, and railfans keep mental logs of which units they have caught. There is a quiet game in this hobby: how many GEU-40s can you tick off your list? Every sighting gets a screenshot, a timestamp, a place in the logbook. If you have ever wondered why grown adults stand on platforms at 1 AM shouting locomotive numbers at each other, now you know — it is a collection, and every number is a trophy.
When two trains pass each other at, say, 80 km/h apiece, the relative speed at the moment of the meet is 160 km/h — and your brain reads relative speed, not actual speed. That is why a dual action feels twice as violent as a single train at the same pace. Add the pressure wave between the two rakes, two horns dopplering past each other, and headlights sweeping across the station in opposite directions, and you get the single most intense ten seconds in night railfanning.
5 Multan Cantt at Nearly 1 AM
The unsung hero of this video is the station itself. Multan Cantt — the cantonment station serving the City of Saints — never fully sleeps. Even in the small hours, the platforms hold their night shift: porters dozing upright on benches, a chai stall still hissing for the overnight passengers, the announcement system murmuring in its calm station voice, platform lamps burning amber over empty stretches of concrete.
A big junction station at night has its own weather. Mist settles over the yards and drifts through the light beams. Every sound carries — a shunting horn from half a kilometre away, the clank of a coupling, the long rolling thunder of an express that you hear minutes before you see. When 45UP’s headlight finally swung into view and the Hazara Express answered it from the other direction, the whole station became a stage. The two trains were the performance. Multan Cantt was the theatre.
6 Why Railfans Chase These Moments
Every railfan has a dual-action story, and they all end the same way: “you had to be there.” Photographs flatten the moment — you lose the sound, the wind, the way the platform seems to vibrate. That is why video is the real trophy. A good dual-action clip gets passed around railfan groups like a rare coin, and everyone asks the same three questions: where, when, and how did you know?
The honest answer is usually that you didn’t know. You were there for something else — a departure, an arrival, a locomotive you were ticking off — and the railway gave you a second train for free. That is the deeper lesson of nights like this one: the railway rewards the people who show up. Stay late enough, stand in enough cold platform air, point your camera at enough midnight approaches, and sooner or later two headlights will converge and you will have your eclipse.
Ours came at 00:58 on a quiet night at Multan Cantt. When the two rakes drew level and the horns overlapped, every second of the wait was paid back with interest.
7 Traveller’s Notes: Riding the Overnight Expresses
- Book the night trains for the full experience. The Pakistan Express and Hazara Express are both long-distance overnight workings — book early, especially for AC classes, and pick a lower berth if you want the window.
- Stay awake for the junctions. The best meets happen at big stations in the small hours — keep the camera by the window and the volume low so you hear the second horn coming.
- Multan Cantt is a fine place to change trains. Good facilities, round-the-clock stalls, and — as this video proves — front-row seats to the night’s drama even if you never board.
- Earplugs are a railfan’s best friend. Sleeping berths near the doors catch every horn and every crossing; pack earplugs and thank us later.
- Respect the yellow line. A dual action throws a real pressure wave between the tracks — stand well back, hold your camera tight, and let the wind do its show from a safe distance.
If two headlights converging in the dark gave you goosebumps, you are exactly who we film for. We are out on Pakistan’s platforms every single day — midnight crossings, dawn departures, real stations, real trains, no staging. Follow the journey on our Facebook page and the Explore With Sarim YouTube channel, and tell us in the comments: what is the best dual action YOU have ever witnessed?
Two trains, two directions, ten seconds of thunder — the night 45UP met 12DN at Multan Cantt, and we will be on the platform for the next one.
Comments
Post a Comment