[tj123]

I was trying to book a train ticket today after a very long time around 1 yr, as usual after entering all the details the page timed out , phew tried again but could not get through. Finally logged on to a private portal , Wow la immediately the ticket was booked without any hassle, in the process paid around Rs 180 extra as some service charges.
Surely someone is making mega bucks by routing all IRCTC bookings to private portals (intentionally not naming any). This is nothing but planned corruption of the highest order, where a person cannot go to a directly and book a simple train ticket on portal easily.
Simple Railway Babu web mantra is to make portal frustratingly slow /not responding so that people in need will have to shell out extra buck to secure their tickets on other private portals/agents.
This is not acceptable by any standard.

[mashmash]

Originally Posted by SILVERWOOD

Guys, finally a good news.

Railways to roll out new e-ticketing service - Yahoo! News

Similar news in TOI too. Indian Railways to roll out new e-ticketing service - The Times of India

NEW DELHI: Indian Railways is all set to roll out its own e-ticketing service, which will have no room for travel agents and will be reserved for individual users.

"Unlike the e-ticketing service of IRCTC, the new service by Indian Railway will have no role of travel agents and commercial organisations. Only individual users will be allowed to book on the portal," said a Railway official.

Travel agents in the IRCTC service have been accused of blocking tickets to sell them at a premium.

Public resentment has also led the railways to bar travel agents from booking tatkal tickets during peak hours on the IRCTC portal.

Under the new railway e-ticketing service, individual customers would need to register themselves for the first time for availing the services. The registration will be free of charge.

A maximum of eight transaction per user ID per month will be allowed in the beginning, the official said, adding, the service charges levied will be Rs five per ticket for sleeper class and Rs 10 per ticket for all other classes.

IRCTS charges Rs 10 per ticket for sleeper class and Rs 20 per ticket for all other classes.

The new service will be available on its web portal Railway Board.

Its launch will be announced after necessary clearance for payment gateway transaction, the official said.

The service will be available from 12.30 am to 11.30 pm.

"The project was sanctioned with a view to consolidate all the services and information on a single window interface for public," the official said.

He said the service will provide passengers another avenue to book tickets, while easing the pressure from the IRCTC website considerably.

On offer is also a service for booking tickets on the mobile platform.

Customers desirous of utilising the facility and having Internet facilities will have to download mobile ticketing application on mobile phones from Indian Railway's website, the official said.

Tracking facility for freight trains running and parcel status by customers would be among a host of other features that the portal is expected to introduce shortly.

[sreeku7007]

Agreed that irctc is a little concerning at times but think of the plain old days when booking a ticket was a day's job especially for people in the upcountry, not withholding the railways cant help attitude when it comes to passenger convenience.
Moreover the portal is rated as the most used and engaged one in day to day life and think of the lakhs of people logged in simultaneously.

[HappyWheels]

Booked tickets for a travel back in India from Irctc site; all done and e-ticket generated in under 5 minutes. This happened an hour back.

Touch a forest, I am yet to face an issue.

I am not sure if all this conspiracy is only for certain high-value routes, in which case, thank God most of the routes I take are low value.

[sgiitk]

I have also found irctc quite handy. When they have some problems the messages might as well be in Greek.

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

I scanned this page, clicked on the railway board's link in mashmash's post, finished all posts on this page, re-read all posts 3 times, and teh railway board site is yet to load. Hope this is not what it will be when actual ticketing begins there.

Only problem I have right now is IRCTS consistently being inconsistent in their page layout on Firefox. Having a blue button in a blue margin is not exactly user friendly.

[Gansan]

I have to visit Bangalore with family on 21st Aug to attend a wedding reception and return by train the same night. I have booked the return tickets by the Chennai Express which leaves by 11.15 PM. I had not opted for any special boarding requests, assuming the reception to be somewhere in the main part of the city.

But today I got to know the venue is a newly opened star hotel at Whitefield. This train also stops at Whitefield, but there are a few stops before it arrives there. Is it possible to incorporate a request to board at Whitefield? Can the TTE allot the berths to someone else if we don't go to Bangalore city station and wait at Whitefield instead??

[silversteed]

Originally Posted by Gansan

Is it possible to incorporate a request to board at Whitefield?

It is possible, AFAIK, but you need to go a booking counter with a request. Better wait for others to confirm this though. And TBH, i haven't done that before, but seen it written in the rules section:
http://www.indianrail.gov.in/reservation_Rules.html

CHANGE OF BOARDING POINT :
If a passenger desires to occupy reserved accommodation from any station enroute, he would be permitted to entrain at any intermediate station he chooses irrespective of the distance from the starting station subject to the following conditions :

1. A specific request must be made in writing at the station from where the ticket is purchased and reservation made atleast 24 hours before the scheduled departure of the train from the starting station.
2. The Railway Administration reserves the right to use such accommodation from the originating station up to the station at which the passenger is due to entrain.
3. No refund will be permissible for the portion of journey not performed by the passenger.

Originally Posted by Gansan

Can the TTE allot the berths to someone else if we don't go to Bangalore city station and wait at Whitefield instead??

Technically, yes. The TTE will allot the seats/berths to others if you don't turn up within 30min or from the first station after the boarding point printed on the ticket. There's a slight confusion here, but I'm sure it will happen if you don't board the train from the boarding station printed in the ticket.

[Gandhi]

The site is down for 45 minutes now. My opinion about IRCTC was slowly changing but I'm back to square one now.

[Milestone]

^ Was trying to book tatkal tickets today, the site doesn’t respond. Ohh man bad luck.

[Gandhi]

I think this is a scam. I did some more investigations today and found out that today they are at least giving an error saying "communication failure". But this happens only in famous browsers like FF, Chrome (I don't have a windows machine, so can't test in IE). When I opened the site in Safari, it just worked fine. The entire process of booking tickets went through normally and I got my confirmed tickets. It means that they have some rules which gets apply based on the browser's user-agent strings. Stupid.

Looks like some lobby is behind the IRCTC not functioning properly, or people working on IRCTC are just dumb.

[Mr_Bean]

Originally Posted by Milestone

^ Was trying to book tatkal tickets today, the site doesn’t respond. Ohh man bad luck.

The site was down till 8:45 display error "service unavailable".. but I finally was able to book my tatkal ticket from Bangalore to Chennai

Originally Posted by Gandhi

I think this is a scam. I did some more investigations today and found out that today they are at least giving an error saying "communication failure". But this happens only in famous browsers like FF, Chrome (I don't have a windows machine, so can't test in IE). When I opened the site in Safari, it just worked fine. The entire process of booking tickets went through normally and I got my confirmed tickets. It means that they have some rules which gets apply based on the browser's user-agent strings. Stupid.

Looks like some lobby is behind the IRCTC not functioning properly, or people working on IRCTC are just dumb.

I think folks who are working on http/https should be able to provide clarity.. It is possible to block traffic but they need to have some kind of deep packet inspection mechanism to provide such level of granularity. IMO I don't think they would do this.

I wasn't even able to login untill 8:45 PM.

[Gandhi]

Originally Posted by Mr_Bean

I think folks who are working on http/https should be able to provide clarity.. It is possible to block traffic but they need to have some kind of deep packet inspection mechanism to provide such level of granularity. IMO I don't think they would do this.

I wasn't even able to login untill 8:45 PM.

For me the site was opening fine and I was able to login. But when I click Find Trains, it was throwing an error about communication failure. Then I switched to Safari on Mac and voila, I booked tickets in first attempt. The site behaved as if nothing was wrong and it was absolutely smooth.

[Milestone]

Originally Posted by Mr_Bean

The site was down till 8:45 display error "service unavailable".. but I finally was able to book my tatkal ticket from Bangalore to Chennai

...

Buddy you are lucky for being able to book tatkal ticket during this 8 - 8.30 window. I don't trust the site for tatkal booking anymore, and have decided to visit railway station for tatkal booking.

Cheers !!!

[SirAlec]

did they allow login for tatkal in the morning. last time i heard they dissallowed login in the morning for 1 hour.

PS: best time to use this site is before they close. 10:30 to 11:30 pm.