Booking rail tickets from abroad- a Beginner's Guide

machadinha

No; your existing ticket is valid. Its movement down the list will be clear, there's no problem with it. (Provided it gets confirmed, of course.) This is also why waitlist numbers consist of two numbers; the first shows where you stepped in along the line, the second what your current waitlist status is (should ideally change to "confirmed" at some point then). So there's no room for mistakes there; that first number will always remain the same (you can only move along a line relative to that line, or it would be meaningless, so to speak). I forget the exact format, but it will be something like e.g. "WL 215/WL 15" I think. You should hopefully see the second number go down, until it reads confirmed then. The first again is just where you stepped in, it will never change.

I.e., you'll show up on any and the TTE's (ticket examiner's) charts as having that ticket, and it's been confirmed, if indeed it has been.

__________________
Reading tips, all picked up at IndiaMike : INDAX's A Comprehensive Guide To India / Dinoj Surendran's Desi Humor / ITHVC on Culture Shock & Travel Health / JetLag Travel Guides For the Undiscerning Traveller / India Travel Links

indracal

Just to add a bit to Mach's post, Indian Railways tracks tickets/passengers/bookings based on the PNR no. on the ticket. So, even if you buy a Waitlisted ticket which in turn becomes confirmed, the PNR remains the same. That's why you do not need to take a fresh printout.

Though same principle applies for a ticket where part-cancellation has been done, ideally you should carry the fresh printout - there the cancelled passengers name would be present with status as "Cancelled". As cancellation is initiated by you from some computer (or similar intelligent device), it is logical that you would be able to arrange a fresh print out as well.

The TTE will carry the passenger chart after final reservation status (charting in IR parlance ) - and therefore he/she will have exact mapping of PNR-Passenger-Class-Coach-Berth.

One word of caution - if you are using an e-ticket (not a paper ticket or i-Ticket), please do not try to board the train if you are waitlisted. Waitlisted eTickets at charting are automatically refunded by the Railways to your bank/financial institution through which you paid using your card.

Now if you want to know more about types of tickets, I guess this thread itself should be helpful - just start from the beginning!!

EDIT: Assuming that one would have e-tickets as (s)he is booking from outside India, please note that even if you misplace the printout, just pay INR 50.00 to the TTE who would issue you an Excess Fare ticket (sort of money receipt basically) - the catch is that you need to remember the PNR. The specific rule is quoted in this post of mine -
Getting an Indian resident to book trains and also here in this IRCTC Link.

__________________
Did you wear the other person's shoe today?

Donna and Neil

I have just been trying to book tickets on IRCTC with UK visa cards.

The first time I tried to book I went through the Citi gateway and the payment was rejected (the message was either due to insuffient funds or wrong expiry date - I have sufficient funds and I put the expiry date right).

The second time I used our other UK visa card and used the AXIS gateway which approved the payment but when it directed back to IRCTC's website it gave this message.

The reservation as per your requested details could not be processed due to one of the following reasons

1.Communication Failure.

2.Berth Allocation could not be met.

3.Compact Accommodation Request not met.

4.Opening day booking (90 days in advance/ less than 90 days in advance for some trains) is not permitted before 08.00 A.M.

The train I am trying to book is the #2431 Rajdhani Exp from Trivandrum (boarding point Ernakulam Junction) to Madgaon on 8th December.

Any ideas what is going wrong?

steven_ber

Hello D & N

Chances are it's just a Comms failure, try again, copy & paste your account number to do it as fast as possible, try to do the whole thing quickly (you've likely learnt it all by heart by now).

There is another possibility, sometimes your bank wont allow the payment as it falls outside your usual spending pattern, a call to the bank usually gets around this problem.

There is availability on that train, so it shouldn't be anything to do with that.

Good luck, and remember, it's all good practice for India.

__________________
.
How to get helpful replies to your transport/Itinerary questions.


Train information.


RAC & Waitlists explained.

Donna and Neil

I've tried again this morning and still getting the same messages. Did it super fast too! It's not our cards as we booked tickets on IRCTC last year with the same cards and we have no blocks on them at all.

Is anyone else having problems too? Not sure if it's worth e-mailing IRCTC?

machadinha

There have been some new and recent developments in the field though; see here, also for some possible solutions: Anyone else having problems paying for tickets with the IRCTC for the last few days?

They are said to be, depending on the nature of the question perhaps, normally quite swift and forthcoming in answering yes.

Donna and Neil

Thanks for the thread, read through it - tried the Axis gateway again and the payment is approved but there seems to be some sort of problem once we are redirected back to IRCTC's site again to confirm the reservation (tried on both VISA cards again). Tried booking through Cleartrip and the same thing happened, the payment was processed and approved but then there was an error with IRCTC when confirming the booking.

Our last thought is because we aren't living in the UK but using a UK card that IRCTC has some new added security due to VbV so we are going to try and get one of our Mum's to book for us using her Mastercard in the UK. Although living outside the UK wasn't a problem last year maybe the VbV added step is complicating things?

ingelalex

WOW! I have read many of these replies now and am getting more and more confused.
We went around south India last year only with trains only by bying our tickets one day before travelling.
Now we will go to Rajastan in January/Februari and would like to do the same thing. But is it usually so fully booked and maybe not possible to do this there??? I don´t like to have my holiday so planned. If I like a place I want to have the opportunity to stay longer if I feel like!!

Donna and Neil

Well we got one of our mum's to try in the UK with both a Mastercard and a VISA card and she got the exact same errors as we did.

Now we are at a loss. We have e-mailed IRCTC to see if they can tell what is happening, but we are slightly worried now that we won't be able to book our tickets.

machadinha

I find it hard if not impossible to advise just like that. I left some thoughts (and cautions) on doing it "on the fly" here, based on my experiences earlier this year (in the off-season, and not in any major tourist areas), see what you make of it: Help with planning a route in Rajasthan.[cry].

Donna & Neil, I've never used the system myself yet, so can't help you further. Fingers crossed on you getting a reply.

btw If all else fails (I would so far hope it won't), you could try and book all your tickets in your city of landing. So at the railways (computerized) reservations counter; any metro or major city where you'll be likely to land should have one, perhaps even a tourist reservations counter to make your life even easier. You don't need to be at any of the stations involved to book for entirely different stretches, so availability provided you could book all your rides in one go.

Donna and Neil

Our last idea is that the booking for the train we want (#2431 Radjhani Exp) hasn't opened yet...seeings though we have tried several of our verified cards through IRCTC's website, through Cleartrip.com and makemytrip.com and none of the transactions have worked.

It's funny because the availablity hasn't changed from 039 since we first looked on Saturday - we thought that 39 is very nearly the number of 2AC berths on an Indian train?

Is it possible that this train doesn't open bookings until 30 days before departure date? Oh, and IRCTC replied to our e-mail to helpfully tell us that all credit cards need to be verified (not what I asked!), so we drew a blank there!

gaurav1441

What are the pair of stations you are trying to book. For this train you need to make sure either your originating station is Trivandrum or destination is H Nizamuddin.

Donna and Neil

We are trying to book Trivandrum to Madgaon with our boarding station as Eranakulam, so this should be ok - right?

gaurav1441

Should be ok.

Donna and Neil

We have booked another train with no problems today, so it seems that the system just has a problem with the following booking we are trying to make:

#2431 Radjhani Exp - 8th December, two 2AC berths.
Booking from Trivandrum (with boarding station of Ernakulam) to Madgaon.

Does anyone have any idea why the booking isn't working for this particular train...is it changing the boarding station which is messing this up or something else?

Help! we really don't know what is going wrong!