Monday, September 9, 2013

Centre for Railway Information Systems Launches New Enhanced Interface for Train Enquiry

Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the IT wing of Indian Railways, has developed an enhanced new interface for the www.trainenquiry.comfor dissemination of information to public. National Train Enquiry System (NTES) developed by CRIS is the backend system which collects information about train running on near real time basis and disseminates information through various interfaces like nationwide unique number 139, Website (www.trainenquiry.com), face to face enquiry, mobile interfaces etc. The new interface is accessible through www.trainenquiry.com or www.enquiry.indianrail.gov.in.

The new interface for the website was made public for past one week as field trial to get users’ feedback. The new interface, which offers quick and easy access to essential information for passengers, has been largely appreciated for its speed, simple interface and richness of information and smooth user experience. This new interface has been launched with effect from 6th September 2013.

Main features of the website provided under different Tabs on the Home page are as under:-

“Spot your train”- This query offers information about a train like Train Schedule, current running status, expected time of arrival/expected time of departure (ETA/ETD) at queried station.Complete running of the selected train can be easily seen through this interface.

“Station”- This query has been given to replicate the display boards at station. One can see, sitting at home the trains expected to arrive/depart at any given station in next 2/4/6/8 hours.Stations can be entered through code or name both. Option is also given to automatically refresh the screen every two minutes.

“Trains between Stations” - A very valuable query covering all trains defined on IR between any two stations. This complete information is presently not available on any other government website.

“Trains Cancelled”– This query displays all trains cancelled on IR. The tab displays trains which are cancelled through entire route as well as cancelled partially and providing service on partial route.

“Rescheduled” and “Diverted” – These queries display all trains marked as rescheduled or diverted on IR. The respective tabs display trains rescheduled timings and diverted route (from – to) information.

Some general characteristics are that all train numbers in different pages have been given as hyperlinks to view the schedule and current running. Pages have been kept light weight to enhance the speed of the website. All the information is navigable from a single home page with minimum clicks. Mobile version of the site is also available through same URL.

The interface has been made bilingual with Hindi version available on the website.

As part of the IR/CRIS ongoing efforts to enhance the quality and availability of information to public, new features such as separate pages for special trains and major events would be made available subsequently.

The existing website interface running as beta version will be replaced with the new interface. All other interfaces namely Events (events.trainenquiry.com), Rail Radar (railradar.trainenquiry.com),Rail Radar Fog view (railradar.trainenquiry.com/fog), SpecialTrains(trainenquiry.com/liveupdates/SpecialTrains.aspx)

Mobile (mobile.trainenquiry.com) and (onthego.trainenquiry.com) will be redirected to the new interface and all the information will be available through the new web interfaces.

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