E-ticketing and Booking Via SMS

Indian railways now has an e ticketing facility. Book your ticket, pay using Visa or Mastercard and simply print the ticket or ERS (Electronic Reservation slip) on your own computer.
Carry it with you along with your stated ID and you're on the train!!


IR accepts the following as valid ID

Voter Identity Card

Passport

PAN card

Driving License

Central/ state Govt issued Photo ID card.


As yet this is a limited service but hopefully this will be extended as thing progress.
At present only confirmed / RAC tickets can be booked through e-Reservation,

Below you'll find a list of the trains you can book via e ticketing as well as the cancellation rules from IR

For more info see here E-tickets

To book you'll have to register here Online Booking (tip : the online booking form demands a zip code and will only except a 6 digit Indian type pin code, make one up or copy from the net, it works no problem just a glitch in the booking form)

To find your trains you'll need this Indian Railways Online
Or this Trains At A Glance

This service is presently available on these pairs of trains.

2005/2006 – New Delhi – Kalka Shatabdi Express

2011/2012 – New Delhi – Kalka Shatabdi Express

2013/2014 – New Delhi – Amritsar Shatabdi Express

2029/2030 – New Delhi – Amritsar Shatabdi Express

2031/2032 – New Delhi – Amritsar Shatabdi Express

2017/2018 – New Delhi – Dehradun Shatabdi Express

2001/2002 – New Delhi – Bhopal Shatabdi Express

2003/2004 – New Delhi – Lucknow Swarn Shatabdi Express

2015/2016 – New Delhi – Ajmer Shatabdi Express

2035/2036 – New Delhi – Lucknow Shatabdi Express

Edit

E ticketing is now available on many trains, though I don't as yet have the published list!!

Cancellation of e-Tickets
e-Tickets can be cancelled on Internet at this website till Chart preparation of the train .Cancellations are not allowed at face to face Railway Counters. If the user wishes to cancel his e-Ticket, he can do so till the time of chart preparation for the train (which is normally 4 hours before the scheduled departure of the train from the train originating station). He can log on to www.irctc.co.in and go to "Booked Tickets" link and select the ticket to be cancelled and can initiate the cancellation by selecting the passengers to be cancelled. However if the Identity Card holder in the original ticket is selected for cancellation, all the passengers in the ticket would have be cancelled and a fresh reservation will have to be made, duly including the ID particulars of another passenger. Cancellation would be confirmed online and the refund would be credited back to the account used for booking as for normal Internet tickets. If there is any partial cancellation of ticket, please ensure that a fresh e-reservation slip (Electronic Reservation Slip) is printed separately as done for the original ticket. To take you step by step and familiarise you with the procedure for cancelling of e-tickets, please click HERE
For any claims on e-Tickets to be cancelled after the preparation of Reservation charts, the user has to send an email at the earliest possible time to etickets@irctc.co.in giving full details of the ticket and stating the claim, which would then be processed by IRCTC with the Railway administration offline and refunds as sanctioned by the Railway administration would be credited back to the user's account


As well as this they now offer a service whereby if registered with IR's mobile reservation services, you can book tickets vis your mobile usins the texting utility. You will also need a m banking account .
For more details see the link SMS train booking!

Great !

It's a start at least anyway.. How useful will THAT be.. !

I guess a small worry might be that it increases bookings and last minute cancellations - making planning a trip more problematic as people find it easier to book, but also easier to cancel ? WL 657 ?

I'm not sure if our Train Guru Steven Ber has done this already but here's something I threw together today, a price comparison of the different train classes!!
Train travel in India is indeed very cheap,have a look at the comparisons below to see just how cheap!!
This is not an exhaustive list, as it doesn't include first class non AC which is usually around the same price as 3AC in and ordinary express trains!
As well as that you have slow passenger trains which are a little cheaper than expresses but take forever.
Many trains also have general class which is non reserved, packed and very cheap. Unfortunately the IR website doesn't list general clas prices!!

Here are some prices based on a long journey From Delhi to Trivandrum!


Class -- 1AC 6875Rps = 2.16 Rps per Km
Class -- 2AC 3495rps = 1.09 Rps per km
Class -- 3AC 2395rps = 0.75 Rps per Km


Class -- 2AC 2603 = 0.85 Rps per Km
class -- 3AC 1658 = 0.54 Rps per Km
Class -- 2SL 609 = 0.19 Rps per Km (second class sleeper non AC)

Here's a short haul comparison! From Delhi to Haridwar


Class -- 1A 840 = 3.41 Rps per Km
Class -- CC 430 = 1.60 Rps per Km (chair class AC)
Class -- 2nd 345 = 1.28 Rps per Km (chair class non AC)


Class -- 1AC 1126 = 4.42 Rps per Km
Class -- 2AC 601 = 2.29 Rps per Km
Class -- 3AC 390 = 2.48 Rps per Km
Class -- 2SL 149 = 0.56 Rps Per Km

Current exchange rates
American Dollar 1= 45.23 rupees
British Pound 1 = 79.90
Euro 1 = 54.06

Train travel is cheap cheap cheap

Hi,

I booked some of my tickets through eTicketing. I was wondering if anyone had tried iTicketing. For some trains where there is no eTicketing they ask you to go for iTicketing where they say they will mail you the tickets. Has anyone tried this? If so, how soon did the tickets arrive?

Pooja

Take a look http://www.indiamike.com/india/showthread.php?t=4305here

Thanks for such a good information

san

I booked one ticket (Chennai-Madurai) via e-ticketing. Surprisingly easy, however....

DO NOT CLICK THE "BACK" BUTTON UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!

that will mess everything up and throw you into the vicious hell cycle of.....

From todays rail budget........

"From today the facility of i-ticket and e-ticket has been made available on all mail and express trains."

cyberhippie glad to know that u made that comparision. Another comparision could be the pllution index where it has been found that Railways are the least polluters compared to all other vehicular or even walking activity.

Just booked an e-ticket sitting here outside India for a ticket to a small town. Though the site is a bit slow but it worked and printed out the ticket alright!

Now I hope that the Railways have trained all their train ticket examiners to recognise an e-ticket as a valid ticket! I will find out soon!

I have finally booked my e-tickets - actually found the process very straight forward - but it certainly helped to have read all of the info on this site thoroughly so that I had all of the information to hand
However - I do just need to ask a blonde question - with an e-ticket do I still need to get tickets delivered to the hotel we are staying out? I pressume that I don't however, there is so much on this site about ticket delivery to hotels!!!
Thanks

No.

The E-ticket facility is new to Indian Railways and was only extended to all trains 3 weeks ago.

Thanks Steven-ber. It is such a great feeling to actually have the e-tickets instead of worrying that they may not have been delivered to a hotel. We are on a tight time frame - different to when I travelled alone - so time is so important now.
I'm amazed at how far India has come in terms of technology - e-tickets for trains, e-tickets for planes, email hotel bookings - we can have so much pre-booked and paid before leaving NZ!!!!

You misunderestimated the IR! Capable of amazing and ridiculous service simultaneously.

Travelled on an e-ticket last Wednesday and as I had anticipated, "chane management" is not as efficient as the e-ticketing process itself - it took 10 minutes to convince the ticket examiner on the train that the printed A4 page in my hand was indeed a ticket! I think it helped that I stood my ground.

If you are travelling on trains other than Rajdhani, remain prepared for a slightly long conversation with ticket examiners and ticket collectors - specially if traveling to smaller stations.