So while I was planning my trip and trying to organize it myself by depending on the online booking feature of Indian Railways, which I kind of felt would definitely have something for internet users planning their schedule. I googled for Indian railways, and found www.indianrail.gov.in , for sure not a familiar site. But after an eternity(actually 3 solid minutes) when the page finally loaded (advertisements first, matter next). I clicked on online reservations and it took me to an external site, which was a tad faster (2 minutes) and I wanted to get started with registering myself as a user, but something clicked and it wasn’t my mouse, it was the name of the website.
www.IRCTC.co.in, it sure was familiar, YES. LOTSA JUNK MAIL in my oooooooooold inbox. I logged in to my old mailbox and flushed out a registered username and password from 2002. That’s right, I remember seeing the irctc website on news and clever me created a username and password in the November of 2002. I always knew I was ahead of my time 
, finally started making a purchase, from what I saw earlier today, purchases can be made only during specific hrs according to IST( I wonder why?), that translates to nightish-owly hours for me. Perfect. Indian railways helps five billion passengers annually, so I”m guessing there are thousands of users trying to get thru its meagre bandwidth somehow, buying tickets or checking status or checking timings.
Finally payment time and I could see a lot of unfamiliar options. Citi PG cards, Bank of Baroda, Bank of Maharashtra (they serve North and South Indians!!!, Thackeray saab, don’t u know it yet? Go break windows of a poor taxi driver around you). And finally, one familiar option, AMERICAN EXPRESS. Funny, it’s the most unpopular card with every business here in US (some costlier surcharge issue to the merchant). And it worked. Perfect.
Funny things about the site itself though. Slow. Station codes are slow to find on the pop-up. Can you believe it? Chennai is MAS, Bhimavaram town is BVRT, Kakinada town is CCT and Secunderabad is SC. The codes are NOT uniform! I wish I could write a site review, but an expert has already done it. Amit Agarwal, otherwise known as India’s best tech blogger has it here. And he sums it up in this statement:
” Pop-ups, frames, blinking text, tables with big borders, scrolling text - which are a big no-no in modern web design - can all be located on the Railways homepage. ” 2005
Of course, some changes have since been made.
Like most of you, I Love train journeys. Maybe, I’ve mentioned it more than often, but I was pleasantly surprised to get a Christmas gift a few months back (2007). A toy from Shanth. Thomas and friends and two attached bogies which chugs like a train and runs on a AA battery. For a few days, kodsi and Chandra were desperate to test its Horse Power (maybe micro HP?) Results, well might be available soon.
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