cleartrip for booking trains - help.

Hello all, this is my first post and probably not my last.

Im about to book my train to hospet from goa.

Ive been on Clear trip.com to book my train. We want to go on sleeper class.

When booking and filling in my details it gives me the option of what birth I want to sit in. The options are - Lower, Middle, Upper, side lower and side upper.

Im confused. I thought it would give me a plan of the carriage and so i could choose our seats.?? We want to sit opposite each other on the single seats by the windows?

Can anybody help.

|Thanks in advance.

That would be side lower and side upper. If you have long legs this can become uncomfortable. There is more legroom on the other side, but "side" has the advantage of the single window seats.

Go for a side berth (SL or SU).

Sleeper Class details & photos.

wow thanks for the quick response.

has anyone used clear trip.?

A lot of the dates im inputting are coming up as cancelled. e.g 2nd january. can this be possible.?

thanks

I use IRCTC.com

It would make so much sense to choose seats from a plan.

I left the following comment on cleartrip's official blog. Shall keep this thread posted, if there is any progress.

Hrush, I have often wondered if it makes any sense at all for a third party to provide railway ticketing services.

I will leave that debate apart, and I do understand that you provide a better usability.

This thread on Indiamike(http://www.indiamike.com/india/india...s-help-t64369/) put me to the next meaningful and useful feature that this ticketing service should really have(though I have no idea how feasible it would be in your limit as a third party).

Why not provide a graphical layout and allow users to choose their seats? They do it for bus ticket bookings, movie ticket bookings, why not for trains?

It would be a worthy value add(and one and only incentive for me to book my train tickets over CT and not irctc).

Thanks.

Hey yeah ive just been on IRCTC.com and it says there are loads of of this route goa-hospet trains have been cancelled from mid december till january.

any ideas why?

I think the service has been reduced from four times a week to twice a week. Now why that has happened is beyond me.

I have spend the past two days hovering on the rail website, not quite ready to commit to something I'm not entirely sure about.... I found "seat 61" to be really useful, if you haven't found it already ( http://www.seat61.com/India.htm#book...from%20outside ). Hope this helps evosy.

I understand about the seat arrangements, that the side berths are one one side of the aisle (it is hard to understand this from photos), and on the other side of the aisle there is the 6-seater area with the other fold down berths.

My only query (for now) is that if I book one the two side berth seats, will they definitely be together? Or will one be halfway down the carriage to the other? May be a silly question but I can't tell if the website gets me....

yeah i get you.

But one would think that if you made a booking for 2 people it would put the 2 people from the same booking together. and other wise inform you if it could not.



So its dropped to 2 a week over the busiest holiday period??? That just doesnt make sense

My next question is on the return journey, on a particular day it was saying class not available, for EVERY class entered??

Whats that all about??

Thanks

They've done that in Thailand for years, it's really cool, they turn the computer screen around for you to choose your berth.

But Thailand's rail network is very simple in comparison to India's.

You can request to be seated together when booking, but if there were only seats available that were not together, you wouldn't get any seats.

The train will hold well over 1000 people, maybe 50 will be tourists.

Of all the holidays in India, Christmas is probibly one of the quietest on the trains, the summer holidays (for example) will see a train sell out all their tickets within minutes of booking opening (91 days ahead).

The train doesn't run every day, and from what I've been reading here it isn't running much at all, I've no idea why though.

If you ask for guaranteed and they cant provide as per Stephen message you get nothing ... better to accept whatever given at outset.

Unlikely that they would be that far apart ... more likely that one in one section and other in next. If they are apart should be easy to swap with other passengers as they would not mind or would also be split - if you see what I mean.

I am assuming there is no rule/law against swapping seats with passengers in same class !

Albert

Unless you book 1AC you find out your seats on confirmation of booking (Yes I too would prefer to see pre payment but thats how it is) - you can match these against plans provided by steven to see where seats are.

If you dont like then you could cancl and redo untill you like but that would be very messy so i suggest swapping on train ....

Albert

"the summer holidays (for example) will see a train sell out all their tickets within minutes of booking opening (91 days ahead)."


How are the people in sleeper class able to book there tickets if they have no internet. Im presuming alot of people in this class dont have much let alone the interenet. ? (or am I wrong in presuming this)