Indian Railways Online Booking

Did you know that you can book the ticket for your rail journey in India on the web? This is one of the exciting things that has happened with Indian Railways. Well the site is slow, its frustrating at times and I am yet to come across anyone who may have successfully managed to complete his reservation online, however the facility is there!!

You can register at their website and follow the link for internet reservations to book the ticket online. They either ship the ticket to any address in India or you can choose to have an e-ticket... GREAT STUFF!!

I tried to use the system, could not succeed in actually booking the ticket, but I could search for the availability of different trains, and I sure can track the status using the PNR number. I think my transaction timed out before finishing, the site probably cannot handle the weight yet. There is a separate section for mumbai suburban trains which could be useful for people from Dombivali to Kandivali and Kasara to Nalasopara.

Anyways, when I tried to book the ticket, and specified the age below 5 years, I got an error, the error was quite amusing. Here's how it looked


I was amused by the use of the word 'Above' as well as the >=, <= signs. Notice the first letter of all the words is capitalised, and in IR does anybody aged 99 or over does not need a ticket? I wonder whether the age field is restricted to 2 digits? Is there a Y2K kind of thing there?

well whatever it is, the railway reservations online is a step in right direction.