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Differences between IRCTC and Indian Railway’s new ticketing service

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I had previously mentioned that Indian Railways plans to introduce a new e-ticketing service like IRCTC. Here are some of the differences noted between the two services -

  1. IRCTC is a separate corporation. Its services will likely continue.
  2. IRCTC has separate logins for agents and passengers. The new service will be only for passengers
  3. A maximum of 10 tickets can be booked per month in IRCTC. Initially at least, this limit will be 8 in the new service.
  4. The new service will be hosted out of www.indianrailways.gov.in . The IRCTC website will continue to be at irctc.co.in
  5. Users will have to create fresh login for the new service

More updates as I get more news. Stay tuned :)

Filed under misc
Jul 5, 2011

Indian Railways to bring out new e-ticketing service like IRCTC

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Indian Railways is going to bring out a new e-ticketing service like the IRCTC, says Economic Times. The new service is meant only for users and not for agents. IRCTC allows both agents and passengers to book tickets from its site. “irctc login” was the most searched term on Google India in the year 2010. The site is often overloaded and unusable. This is particularly so at 8 a.m. on Fridays and Wednesdays. The huge traffic on the site results in a very slow experience while booking. The payment and booking often fails.

One hopes that the new website would go on to be much better than the IRCTC. Of primary importance would be scalability – it should handle heavy load from it’s users and still provide a reasonably fast experience. Improved user experience would also be welcome. Another site that they own – http://indianrail.gov.in/ – is a brilliant example of how a website should NOT be designed.

Here’s to the Indian Railways wishing them the best in their endeavour. Be tuned for more updates :)

Filed under misc
Jul 5, 2011

CKWL on Tatkal railway ticket

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So the other day I booked a tatkal ticket online from IRCTC. After the usual 500 errors and multiple tries I came to the "Congratulations!" page where they gave me the ticket details. And this is what I found in the ticket's status "CKWL 23". I wondered what the heck it was. Googling did not help. I shot off a mail to the IRCTC customer care and within half an hour I got their reply. Reproducing their reply below -
Dear Customer, Kindly note that CK stands for Tatkal CKWL means Tatkal Wait list Ticket. Thanks & Regards
So there it goes. Official reply from IRCTC. CKWL is the waiting list for the tatkal quota. It's just like the "WL" you get on the normal ticket, except it's on the tatkal quota. No idea what CK stands for though. Although the reply wasn't exactly Shakespeare, I was impressed that they got back to me so soon. It's nice to see the Railways doing good stuff. There's still room to improve though. Have you had a similar experience with IRCTC? Frustrating one? Good one? The comment form is right below :) Update : Found something in the IRCTC site in the ngpay FAQ. It says(in point 9)
Booking can be done against general (GN), ladies (LD) and tatkal (CK) quota berths/seats only.  
. What this means is that GNWL is General Quota Waiting list, LDWL is Ladies Quota Waiting List and CKWL is Tatkal Quota Waiting list. Pretty much any 4 letter acronym ending in WL is some Waiting list quota or another. For instance if you have been wondering what PQWL means in IRCTC, then it is a Pooled Quota Waiting List. If you're looking to improve the time it takes to book tatkal tickets, you can try the Autofill forms extension. Check out my blog post on how to use the Autofill forms addon.
Filed under misc
Dec 9, 2009

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