I wanted to write this post about a year ago and finally able to get to it. My wife and I frequently travel by Indian Railways and for sometime, there are a few nice things that introduced by Indian Railways:
- Upgraded tickets: This happens when ticket has booked under waiting list. While booking the ticket (if you are booking online using IRCTC (External website), ensure you tick the check box that says “Auto-upgrade”. So at the time of final chart preparation, more chances that you would get your seat in an upgraded class. Good part is that you don’t have to pay any extra money! However, railways need to fix one of the problems with this auto-upgrade process. When user is opted auto-upgrade, it would be applicable even if you got a confirmed ticket at the time of booking to accommodate other passengers who are under waitlist and as a group. In such a case user would be upgraded and the seat is allotted to someone else. But the problem here is that original user doesn’t get any notification. It did happen to me once. Since I was not aware this could happen to confirmed passengers, I was for a while confused and also had to wait until ticket authority comes and informs about my new seat. Alternately one should always check their PNR status before boarding the train.
- Second nice thing that Indian Railways has introduced is a lot of enhancements to their enquiry number 139. Now user can get a lot of inromation including PNR status, Track the train, seat availability and much more. Refer SMS Service with 139 (external link) for more details
Overall, now the travel in the trains have become much more easy and comfortable.
Happy and safe travels!
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