139 to work at lightning speed from January onwards

[Indian Railway News]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lucknow/139_to_work_at_lightning_speed_from_J\
anuary_onwards/articleshow/3770797.cms

29 Nov 2008, 0420 hrs IST

LUCKNOW: Come January and 139 enquiry service will bring you `high-
speed'
information about trains. The service which is currently updated every
half-an-hour to provide passengers the latest positioning of trains,
will be
updated every second from January onwards.

And, demonstrating it well is the operations wing of North Eastern
Railway (NER)
which is having its first brush with `IT' (Information Technology) for
the
purpose, at the Lucknow division. "We can see it on the computer chart
that the
train number 9038 (Bandra Express) is at Gaur station at this hour of
the day
(15:45), had 139 been connected to this chart, we could have told the
passengers
about this latest by-seconds position of Bandra,'' said an official.

All-India enquiry service 139 will be connected to the computerised
charting of
trains, in all possibility, "within the next two months''. The effort
is a joint
venture of Centre for Rail Information System (CRIS) and Wipro, a
private sector
firm which has developed the required software.

The computerised control charting will replace the ancient manual
charting where
the control room staff is needed to draw curves on a huge chart for
every
movement of train after he/she gets information from the station
master. The
same information is then fed into the NTES by the control room staff.

Once, the two processes get connected, the time taken due to manual
efforts will
be reduced. The automatic transferring of information into 139 will
make the
service `instant and friendlier' to railway users. The officials
shared that the
passengers in Varanasi and Izatnagar divisions might also get the
revamped 139
at their disposal around the same time as Lucknow.

Lucknow is not the only division where the experiments are on. CRIS
has
handpicked other divisions (like Nagpur) also for the trial of the
computerised
control charting and its connection with 139. "These are two separate
experiments,'' shared an official adding that the division needs to
train its
staff in computer operations so that they adapt to the change quickly.

The renewed enquiry service will be of extreme use to passengers from
Lucknow
who often complain about 139 providing the `wrong or delayed'
information. The
round-the-clock enquiry service 139 is a call centre number to which
you can
make calls by both fixed and mobile numbers at local rates and seek
information
about PNR status, arrival/departure of trains, seat availability and
fare/accommodation. Pressing star will take you to the customer care
executive.