Erail: Train availability checking not possible

If you check the train availability on http://erail.in/ you get the disappointing message:

That's too bad.

Maybe Indian Railways can take a lesson from erail and develop a usable site.

That is very bad indeed.

I think they are looking for more commercial tie-ins, maybe.

but when i chekced in the site around 3 hrs, it was working perfectly !!!

Checked it just now and got the same message, a wonderful site, with an easy interface.

I checked a lot of my train schedule with this site earlier this year.

I did have a thought or two a while back, while this site is a great source but, if they were simply taking it from the cyber network without a license from IR, this would be a obvious outcome.

There's a few experts out there, what do you think, has Erail ceased to be, did they pilfer the IR network, free of charge.


Should they be given a job with CHRIS

still the site is worki perfectly !! just now agian i Chekced !! i never got the message as the first poster told..

Not for me it isn't. Maybe it's only working from within India?
Are you sure you tried to get the availability of a train?

I have also got the message sporadically. The IRCTC now has an official list of authorized agents which you can access with the following link. My guess is that they want to get erail to become an official agent (and pay the fees) but do not want to upset possible customers.

http://www.irctc.co.in/agent_types.pdf

With this message now there can be no misunderstanding:

"This is not an authorized website to access Indian Railways Information, For Authenticate information please go to Indian railways website. Or Click here to continue...
http://www.indianrail.gov.in"

Well, there's no ambiguity in that message. That's too bad. In my opinion, erail.in is practically perfect in every way. I spend a lot of time there...

I noticed it went down last night (Australian time).this has happened before -recently - and they have come back .. hopefuly that will happen this time.

IR site itself was not working last night .. severe delays so two might be related .. has anyone else had problems withIR site today/yesterday?
Albert

Also

I wonder why IR would want to stop erail using info .. from what I can see erail totally promotes IR ... and directs you there for ticket bookings .. infact who runs erail and how do they make money ?

Albert

is there is any alternative site to erail.in as it is so simple to get all information about indian trains as on now as the official website www.indianrail.gov.in is also not working from last 4 days for seat availability. why IR blocked erail site as it help to them only whenever their site crash or slow down it help to us to get all the inforamation in a single page without touching keyboard.

It looks very simple to me, you can't just use other people's data without permission, no matter if this could be construed as promotion or whatever. Moreover, no one is likely to take kindly to your one-sided efforts and claims to promote them, if again you have no agreement to that effect. And the Railways is serious business of course, not some low-key project.

Period. I've long been wondering if and if so, for how long the Railways would put up with it, and there have been signs before they'd put an end to it. I could think of some more drastic steps they might have taken.

nb Regarding the Railways site's inaccessibility, I've been seeing messages of late regarding updates going on there. So the two may be unrelated. Or those updates may have involved their (partly) blocking access to third-party sites, of course.

(Erail itself notably featured such messages, regarding such updates and hence database inaccessibility, for a bit. I guess it must have come as a surprise to them as well those updates would amount to this.)

... ps As I'm sure most users will have noticed, but just as a little update that Erail.in does again seem to provide seat availability data.

Whether they struck a deal or something I don't know, it's a welcome development/continuation in any case.