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 It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to declare Indian railways as the lifeline of Indian transport system. It transports more than 1.8 million passengers every year. No less than 300 million tonnes of cargo are carried through Indian railway every year.
The fact that Indian railway is busiest means of transportation in India; it is definitely a big challenge to ensure reservation. In order to make certain a stress free and comfortable journey, one needs to book his tickets in advance.
Indian Railways offers several facilities for reserving the tickets. This way, people can plan their journeys well in advance. Some of the facilities offered by Indian railway are, seat reservation, train enquiry, online booking etc. All credit to Indian railways for making the process of seat reservation much simpler than ever before. Since the time computerisation of reservation of seats was introduced in 1995, people have it real easy. The concept and comfort was further enhanced with the arrival of online train booking.
Reserving a seat can be done through buying the tickets from the counter or through numerous travel agencies or over the internet. Indian railway has made sure that there is no dearth of ticket booking centres across the length and breadth of the country. Popular and busy railway stations have many ticket counters so that travellers have a hassle free reservation experience. The working time of the booking counters are from morning 8 AM to evening 8 PM. On Sunday, the timing is reduced to 2 PM in the afternoon.
Now a day, most of the reservation centres have been converted into computerized centres which were earlier manual reservation centres. The ticket booking centres provide ticket booking facilities from any station to any destination. The necessity of seat reservation arises from the fact that most of the train routes are almost always in demand and it becomes impossible to get ticket on the spot right before the departure of the train. It’s not easy to travel on a crowded train in absence of a confirmed seat so it’s better to get the bookings in advance. One can make advanced reservation 90 days before the actual date of journey. Even in that case, people have experienced long queues and waiting tickets if they are looking for reservation on a busy route.
Confirmed reservation ensures that passenger is entitled to enter and travel by the train in the allotted seat number. According to rules set by Indian railway, reservation for maximum of six persons is allowed on a single train. There are certain facilities and concessions offered to senior citizens and physically handicapped people. One popular mode of railway reservation is ‘Tatkal’ scheme that allows people to book tickets 2 days in advance of a journey on the payment of additional fare. A seat is considered confirmed if the ticket has both coach number and berth number. If you are wondering about RAC status, it indicates that person can enter the coach but will be granted only sitting option. Indian railway also offers option of break journeys that must be completed within the validity period.
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