How to Book Train Tickets? Quirks and Perks of Online Booking

People often deal with many concerns such as booking of a ticket. I am here to help those people and offer them information about how to easily book train tickets.

There are two ways to book a train ticket:

Ticket Counters

Visit your nearest railway station and make sure that they offer services for ticket booking. All you have to do is make the payment, and the booking will be completed. You have to check for the availability of the seat prior to visiting the counter. Thoroughly check if there are seats available on the train of your choice. You can also ask the counter for this information.

Online Booking

This process is convenient and people prefer to use this. All you need to book a train ticket online is an internet connection and a working system. Follow these steps:

1. Visit irctc.co.in.
2. Log in or create an account.
3. Choose the boarding station as well as the destination.
4. Select the time and the train you want to travel in.
5. Fill out the form with your authentic details.
6. Complete the booking with the online payment.

For me, online booking is the best way because we have the authority to take a soft copy of the ticket. We can also enable notification of the mobile phone or check the status of the ticket with PNR number. I have also offered information about PNR number in another write-up.

Online booking can also be completed by using third party websites such as Cleartrip, MakeMyTrip, Yatra, and others. These platforms make the whole process secure, but they charge a little extra for the bookings.

Just like every other service, online booking has its quirks and perks. Let’s discuss more about this.

Perks Of Online Train Bookings:

1. The whole process becomes completely hassle-free.
2. No need to stand in long queues.
3. No fuel consumptions to travel to the railway station.
4. The minimum time is consumed.
5. Easy access to all the information of the trains, station, and the seats.
6. No risk of losing, damaging or forgetting of the ticket.
7. In the events of cancellation, the due amount will be directly transferred to your respective accounts.

Quirks of Online Train Bookings:

1. The user is unable to avail various concession benefits through online booking.
2. The whole online payment might be easily affected due to various reasons, for example, insufficient balance in account, server not reachable, website not working properly, etc.
3. The official website of Indian Railways charges extra amount for online bookings. Due to this extra charge, the ticket becomes slightly costlier as compared to counter booking.

All these disadvantages are always compensated for me when I don’t have to stand in the queues for long of travel in bad weather. So, I suggest and prefer using online booking every single time.

EXTRA - With an offline booking you can get various concession benefits which are not found in online train ticket bookings. But if you are planning to book a ticket offline; get ready to stand in queues and waste hours.