INDIAN TRAINS!

Indian Railways, Tit Bits!

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Indian Railways has one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting over 18 million passengers and more than 2 million tonnes of freight daily.

Indroduced in: 1853

Sites:

Home Page:

www.indianrail.gov.in

www.indianrailways.gov.in

IRCTC:

www.irctc.co.in

Indian Railways Map:

www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/india-railway-map.htm

Bookings and cancellation:

Online Booking:

Indian railway ticket can be booked online on the IRCTC site.

There are two types of tickets available online:

iTicket - This is the hard copy ticket which is usually issued over the counter. This tickets are sent by courier to your mailing address. This ticket has to be canceled over the counter as normal tickets. No cash will be refunded in that case, it will refunded to the account from which payment was made.

eTicket - This tickets are fully online. In this case you just need to print the ticket from online. This tickets can be cancelled online as well. Tatkal and Waiting tickets can also be booked by this now. On cancellation the money will be refunded to the account by which payment was made (Credit card/Debit card etc).

Cancellations and refunds:

On Confimed tickets:

a. If cancelld more than 24 hours before departure, then charges deducted are:

Rs. 70 for AC 1st Class/ Executive class.
Rs. 60 for AC 2 tier, AC 3 tier and Chair Class.
Rs. 40 for sleeper class.
Rs. 20 for second class.

b. If cancelled with one day in advance to upto 4 hours from departure. This is excluding the day of departure. (i.e if cancelled on the day before the day of departure or before 4 hours on the same day). Cancellation charge will be 25 % of the total fare, flat.

c. If cancelled after that, i.e after 4 hours prior to departure the cancellation charges will be flat 50% of the total fare. This can be done till few hours after departure. The duration depends on the total distance of the destination station of the ticket.

If you have any other queries and not getting to what you are looking for, then please post a comment. Will try to resolve it as soon as possible.

RAC Tickets:

RAC means "Reservation Under Cancellation"

If your status remains RAC at the time of departure, then you are allowed to board the train.

An RAC status entitles you to a single seat, but no berth.

So against each RAC ticket there will be seat no. allocated.

This is usually the side lower berth and two RAC tickets are allocated on one seat. So you have to share a single berth.

This tickets gets confirmed based on the cancellation during the journey or just before departure. This means if there are vacant seats, then the TTE after complete checking allots all the empty seats to RAC people. This allocation happens on the basis of your RAC no. Thus starts from RAC 1 and goes till no. of seats available.

Note: Each seat available converts into two berths for RAC people. The one which is available and the one which was shared.

Travel Classes and Class Codes

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The various classes for travel in Indian Railways are as follows:

1A - AC First Class
2A - AC Second Class (2 tier)
FC - First Class
3A - AC 3rd tier
CC - Chair Car
SL - Sleeper Class
2S - Second Seating

The various accomodation types are Seats, Berths and Chair Car.

1A, 2A, 3A, FC and SL have siting option in the day time and have sleeping on berths in the night time. Officialy the time to use the berts for sleeping is from 9 PM to 6 AM. This timing applies only for 3A and SL in which there are 3 berts each side and the middle berth needs to be folded, for faciliting siting.

Some Acronyms and thier meanings.

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ADFT - Arrival Departure Time Frame
The time between the arrival and departure of a train at a station.
So basically this means the duration for which a train has a stoppage at any station.

RAC - Reservation Against Cancellation
To know what RAC means, read on the home page.

Special Trains

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There are few special trains in Inidia:

Rajdhani

These trains runs from various states, usually from thier capitals to the national capital - New Delhi.

Shatabadi

Interesting fact about shatabdi trains:

This trains do come back to thier originating station the same day.

Thus shatabdi runs for short distance and within day time. It does not run in the night!!

Garib Rath - Started recently, a few years back. (In 2005 by Mr. Lalu Prasad)

The basic idea in introducing this trains is make Air Conditioning travel cheaper. And thus to make it affordable to the lower section of passengers.

Some pointers:

Takal on Garib Rath works in the same way as other trains. So all same rule implies. Also the chrages are same as other train Tatkal schemes, which is Rs. 300 for 2nd AC and 200 for 3rd AC.
There are currently 12 Garib Raths running accross India. Get a complete list of these trains and thier schedule on the following link:

www.indianrailways.gov.in/tag0708/Pdf/Garib_Rath.pdf

No document, or proof of income is required to get this ticket. Just mentioned because have heard some people doubting if Garib rath is actually meant for the garibs only (poor people). It is indeed proving to me more popular among the middle class :)
The structure of the coaches were chnaged by the introduction of this trains. There are now nine berts in a coupe. The railways have added an extra berth in the middle at the side. This is in between Side Lower (SL) and Side Upper (SU) and is known as Side Middle (SM). Now this concept is gradualy being spread among 3rd AC coaches of few other trains as well.
Garib Rath trains don't have RAC tickets!! This is because as mentioned above they have 3 berths in the side as well. Thus the logistics does not allow it to have RAC quota.
The Garib Rath's are supposed to be very fast (only slightly slower than Rajdhanis) yet they'rTe priced at 40% less than other trains.
The capacity of the coaches in these trains is also slightly more. They have 80 seats in 3rd Ac and 104 in Chair Car - CC.

Tatkal Seva

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Facts to know -

Tatkal tickets can be 5 days in advance of the date of journey.
Tatkal tickets can be generally booked only from the originating to the terminating station. That is for the entire journey of the train. However this varies from zone to zone. Usually in most of the cases, it has to be either from originating station OR to terminating station.
Tatkal charges:

Classes	Existing Tatkal Charges in Rs.
	Non- Peak (Feb 1 - Mar 31 & Aug 1 - 31)	Peak Period (Rest of year)
2 AC	200	300
3 AC	200	300
AC Chair Car	75	150
SL	75	150
2S	15	15
Garibh Rath 3AC	200	300
AC Chair car	75	150

Cancellation charges for Tatkal tickets is 25 % flat of the normal fare exculding tatkal charges, if cancelled before at least 24 hours of the departure.
No refunds are made on confirmed Tatkal tickets if cancelled within 24 hours of departure.
For waiting list tickets under Tatkal scheme, the normal cancellation policy applies. That means rules for regular tickets apply for waiting tickets in Tatkal. So this tickets can be cancelled in a similar way (at the counter, or online if iTicket). And the cancellation charges will be same as those for general tickets!

List of trains under tatkal sewa scheme can be found here:

http://www.indianrail.gov.in/tatkal_trn_list.html