Technology that works

Everyone’s always highlighting things that don’t work here in India, so I thought for a change let’s talk about something that does, and quite well at that.

Train enquiry allows you to track movement of trains in “real time”. Well, it’s not exactly up-to-the-minute information on the trains but it does give you the (exact) time of departure and the (expected) time of arrival at all major stations along the route of a(ny) train that is currently running. The information is updated every 30-60 mins, so you can get a fair idea of the current position of the train. And it’s pretty accurate too – I can vouch for that!

I’m not sure if too many people know about this but it’s pretty cool to see Indian Railways provide this information online. If they can put this information on a map and have data for multiple trains, I know atleast one person who might drop in to their site just to watch all those trains go by… he he. We seem to have this idea of our railways being stuck in the 19th century, despite all the changes they’ve made recently like the online reservation system (which has been a huge hit). But let’s give some credit where it’s due.

So check the site next time before you leave your house to pickup someone from the station – it might save you the trouble of waiting a couple of hours at the station.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.