Extending its utility search offerings, Rediff.com, India’s leading online portal, today announced the launch of an extremely easy and efficient search service to find seat availability and fares for trains in India. The ‘Rediff Trains Fare Search’ (http://indian-railways.rediff.com/index.php) service allows users to check availability of seats with fares, check PNR status, get detailed schedule of trains including real-time arrival and departure status by using a simple search engine query.

Rediff Trains fare search service will also offer users a comparative view of the lowest airfare for the choosen rail route within the same search query. For ex: (for a rail journey from Mumbai-to-Delhi – the search engine will give results for available trains for that particular day and also show the lowest air fare ticket available for the same date). This unique feature is introduced to help the users to choose their mode of travel depending on their budget and plan their journey more efficiently and conveniently.

In addition to this, Rediff Trains Fare Search takes away the pain of compulsory registration process and remembering difficult station codes by providing users with a predictive text support for all stations across India. Once the user has confirmed the destination and date of travel Rediff Train fare search shows all the possible options and details of the journey in just one click.

The Rediff Trains fare search data is consistent with the records maintained by the Indian Railway authorities. Once the user has finalized the appropriate train and wants to book the tickets, the service gives the users options to book the tickets either through IRCTC site or through travel agents whose details are also available on the system.

Accommodation Availability Enquiry on Trains till Departure

Note:- This Enquiry  is  available from 0400 hrs IST to 2330 hrs (GMT+5:30 hrs)

Today Indian railways blocked showing seat availability and pnr status data from all the train information sites which were giving the information in user-friendly manner. This is really a monopoly nothing else. In this information age Indian railways blocking all the sites means they are not interested about public . they have auctioned the website for ad at 4.5 crore to a private agency. they want to earn money nothing else. The guys who started this private sites to show the train information to public at the public interest and also a passion to create something new, CRIS (centre for Railway Information system)who manage the official website of Indian railways have never updated there information pages as they are govt. servant and you know what could expect from them.Showing information of public domain is not illegal but it helps public. Has anyone given the complaint about any of this site that they are showing wrong information. they are just showing the same page of Indian railway official website in a interactive and user friendly manner. If Indian railways or CRIS are really interested of public then they can also show the information on a user friendly manner and also get the good public response

For example www.erail.in never store the live data of pnr status and seat availability in their server. They were showing the original page of www.indianrail.gov.inand that also all the information in a single page. in this age monopoly will not work if someone go to the court CRIS will surely going to lost the case , there are so many examples of showing information of public importance by private entrepreneurs. All the news paper showing the train departure and arrival time,seat availability every week and some newspaper show daily because it helps general public . instead of blocking the private site CRIS should have welcome them as they are helping public when the Indian railway server is down (which is always slow) and the important public information cannot be copyright.

We must as citizens fight to promote such efforts and not succumb to hegemony of government departments. The official website ranking is dropping every month (see www.alexa.com) and  they are fearing of competition. Instead of competition they are warning and blocking the new comers who are having a passion to do something for Indian public.

Indian railways should consider this private  site as a better alternative and not competition. After all cooperation is better than competition.

 compare this private site with the official sites yourself and see what this new boys has done without thinking of money (Except google adwords they do not get any revenue from this sites) which is the only motto of Indian railways and CRIS.