The Hindu : New Delhi News : Now hassle-free info at New Delhi railway station

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Friday, Aug 06, 2010
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New Delhi

Now hassle-free info at New Delhi railway station

Manisha Jha

NEW DELHI: The next time you find yourself lost at New Delhi railway station wondering about the status of your train or berth, forget queuing up at the long winding enquiry counter line because help is at hand, courtesy a new scheme soon to be introduced by Northern Railway.

Under this, the ticket checking staff manning the station entrances and exits would be provided with hand-held devices based on General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology which will provide the latest information on train positions just at the touch of its screen after entering the relevant train number.

The information provided to the passenger will include the scheduled arrival time of the train, the duration of delay if any, the new expected time of arrival of the train and the platform number on which the train will be arriving.

According to Divisional Railway Manager, Delhi Division Northern Railway, Ashwini Lohani, two such hand-held sets would be tried out on a pilot basis at New Delhi railway station within the next 10 days and if found successful the service would be extended to Old Delhi and Hazrat Nizamuddin railway stations as well with 10 additional sets being procured.

“The idea is to facilitate passengers who no longer have to run from one counter to another to know the latest update of their train. All they have to do now is approach any of the ticket checking staff present at the station and give them their train number. Once this number is keyed in the hand-held set, the exact information on the train would show up automatically on set's display screen for the convenience of the passengers,” he added.

Mr. Lohani said: “We are trying to integrate all information provided by the railway telephone enquiry number 139 on these sets. This would also include information of trains running not just on a particular day but also one day before and one day after it as often during fog trains running one day get delayed to the next day as well.”

In addition, the reservation charts pasted on station display boards and causing much overcrowding and confusion too could be a thing of the past with the Northern Railway planning to introduce digital reservation charts on 46-inch LCD display sets.

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