Railways to release first reservation chart more than eight hours before train's departure

The Indian Railways will now prepare the first reservation chart by previous evening at 9 pm for trains departing between 5 am to 2 pm. Further, first reservation charts for trains departing after 2 pm to 5 am next morning will be prepared eight hours in advance, with the changes being implemented in a phased manner.

In an official statement, the Ministry of Railways said the current practice of preparing reservation charts four hours before train departure creates uncertainty in the minds of passengers.

The new timeline will greatly help passengers with waitlisted tickets. Such passengers will now get the first update on waitlist status well in advance.


It will especially benefit passengers travelling from remote locations or suburbs of major cities to catch long distance trains. It will also provide more time to make alternative arrangements in case the waitlisted ticket is not confirmed, the statement said.

In another passenger-centric move, the railways announced complete rehaul of passenger reservation system (PRS) by December.

The new PRS will allow over 1.5 lakh ticket bookings per minute, around five times more than the current capacity of 32,000 tickets per minute.

Under the new PRS, ticket inquiry capacity will increase 10-fold, from 4 lakh to over 40 lakh enquiries per minute. The system will also have a multilingual and user-friendly booking and inquiry interface.

The decisions were made at a review meeting chaired by Vaishnaw last week. Officials said the project has been under execution by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) over the last few months.