This train takes the longest on paper to cover GD-LKO section. Heck, even crawlers like Lucknow Barauni are a tad faster and they have multiple stops and take a longer loop for going to LJN. Krishak is a tad slower but again, it covers a longer distance to LJN and hence it's average speed is still faster. The only train slower than this is a special one. Goes to show that the average speed of this train can and should be updated between GD and LKO.
That being said, I think they...
more... are not doing so because they want this train to trail GWL-BJU. I think that this train sees a lot of passengers from GKP. The timings would be more suitable if they were switched to couple of hours later. The current timings sees a lot of trains going towards Lucknow leading to saturation.