Indian Railways

Today i would like to review all the Indian railways train search websites and their pros and cons. There are 7 train search website as on now and i have surf all the site and find each one has there own pros and cons. I have not seen so much difference in all the website except way of presenting and also look.  I would like to start with the official website first. I have not included the online booking website of indian railway trains in this list as they will be review seprately . For your information they are www.irctc.co.in  and www.thomascook.in . please vote the best site in the right side panel.

http://www.indianrail.gov.in/

This is the official website to search all the Indian railways trains. First it has lot of pop-ups and advertisement which make the user uncomfortable. This site does not show the passenger and express train which do not have a reservation coach. Here a user must know the train name or number and also station code without this information he cannot search the trains. they have given the link for searching the station code but if the user does not know the correct spelling of the station name he cannot get the station code. one more think is for each entry you will have to go to get it from separate page. if you does not know the date of running of the train then also you are not able to search the trains.

pros: official, show the current seat availability

Cons: Bad Presentation, Not user Friendly, Pop-ups, Advertisements , Very slow,

Star received : 0

http://www.trainenquiry.com/

This is also official website of Indian Railways. Here you can search all the trains including passenger and suburban trains except trains of mumbai,chennai,Hyderbad,Howrah suburban trains. You can not see the seat availability position in this website. you can see the current running status of the all the trains. while going through this website i have noticed that it has lots of double entry and wrong data like spelling mistake in the train names and train numbers also are wrong in so many cases. the most interesting thing i have seen that it shows the trains which not exist. the pages has not been updated from last 3 years except the train data all the pages are showing very old data which is giving it a bad name. the same thing we can say for this site also it also has the same problem which indianrail.gov.in have . you must know the train running date, train number, train name , station code, to get the information but here you have a drop menu box to choose the station name if you type 3 first correct word and then you can choose the station name. the other pages except the train data does not have any impact on the website.

Pros: Running status of train, all the passenger and mail express trains of Indian railway,

Cons: bad presentation, not user friendly, double entry, lots of wrong data , data of the trains which are not running and which has been renumbered shows both the numbers, spell mistake in train name, not updated other information pages.

Star received:  1

http://indian-railways.rediff.com/index.php

This site has lot of pop-ups and advertisement. it show only the train which has reservation coaches. and all the pages has lot of advertisement and because of that it opens very slow and it look is good but the presentation of train does not have a good look for each category to see fare, book, availability you will be redirected to another pages to see more advertisement. This website link travel agent to book the ticket . here also if you do not know the exact station name and station spelling it is not possible to check the trains .

Pros: Good looking, correct data,

Cons:unofficial, lot of pop-up, bad presentation,

Star received   2

http://www.cleartrip.com/trains

this website is just another copy of rediff and zoomatra the look and presentation is same as in rediff, The most worse is that they does not have all the train data and also not updated the train data. the train search is not showing all the trains . it does not have pop-up and also does not have lot of advertisement so that it open fast and it has to update the data .

Pros: open fast, no pop-up, some user friendly

Cons:    unofficial, train data are not updated, not showing all the trains,

Star received:      1

http://www.zoomtra.com/indian-railways/

This site look is good and it has a good feature that they give a sms service for pnr status . the page open fast but does not have updated the train data so far after one month of change of train time table. it is not user friendly as all the detail open in a other window. does not show all the trains.

Pros:      SMS service, Open fast,

Cons:  Unofficial, not user friendly, presentation is not good,

Star received:    2

http://www.90di.com/travel/

This site look is good and also this is the only one in this group which search multi trains and links and i am very impressed about this features. it open fast it does not have pop-up and advertisement and also it has more features then all the above sites. the only fault i have seen in this site is the some of trains search are not showing the fast time in multi search trains . i am really very  impressed by this site we cannot find any fault with this site they are updating regularly and also putting new features every month.

Cons:  Unofficial,

Pros:  the one and only multi train search engine, good look, good presentation, open fast.

Star received:      5

http://www.erail.in/

I have not seen such a good site which has so many features in a single page . The better way to search Indian trains looks great and it open fast, no pop-up, user friendly. every information in a single page . this concept is good and some of the features like calendar, train running day has not come in a single website in this reviews. the most important features i have seen in this site that if the user does not know the station code then also he can see all the trains and it is only website which have a drop menu box for the important station from where you can choose the station name and also it has a date calendar from you can choose the date and it show the running day of the train so that you can know which day of the week this train is running. the other most important feature i have seen in this website that it show the train which does not have the reservation coach for the benefit of the user and they are showing the passanger train also which is also not available in any website.

Cons: Unofficial

Pros: all the features which user need, open fast, user friendly, good look and interactive, update data regularly, new features

Star receieved:  5