NEW DELHI, APRIL 24:Their endless sheets of reservations charts are passe, Travelling Ticket Examiners will now be seen toting fancy hand-held devices. In fact, the pilot project to provide hand-held devices to TTEs, announced as a part of last year’s Railway Budget, has been underway for almost two months now. Currently, TTEs on the the Dehradun Shatabdi, the Amritsar Shatabdi and the Ajmer Shatabdi have been equipped with these devices.

The devices, manufactured by IBM, have been made very sturdy keeping the rigours of train journeys in mind. As if to demonstrate, the Rakesh Kumar, Deputy Superintendent on the Dehradun Shatabdi, which The Indian Express boarded to check out the device, promptly dropped the device from his hand. “See, not a scratch,” he says, before picking it up to highlight its other features. Soon, complete reservation charts, wait list charts, confirmed seats and all other relevant information start flashing on the screen.

“The device is directly connected to the central passenger reservation system. So, any change I make here will be reflected on the system,” he says. He demonstrates by assigning a vacant seat to a waitlisted passenger due to board the train at Saharanpur, the next station. “Earlier, we had to wait till we got to the station to assign berths to passengers, but now we just assign a vacant berth en route. The information is received at the station and it becomes easier to inform the passengers the status before the train rolls in. Saves us a lot of confusion,” adds Kumar.

The official, however, accepts that connectivity can be a problem at times. “So it’s always best to carry these as a safety measure,” he says, patting the bulky paper charts he still carries around. Sure enough, the journey back finds him relying on the paper charts as the connection fails.

Kumar confesses that it did take some time or him to get used to the gadget. “However, before the pilot project, trial runs were done so that we learnt how to use the device long ago. We also underwent a three-day training with CRIS (Centre for Railway Information Systems),” he says.

“The device definitely has made life easier for us,” Kumar says, but not before adding that each device costs Rs 70,000 and he could have to be “very careful with it”.

“The pilot project has been largely successful and we plan to expand it to all Shatabdis, Jan Shatabdis and Rajdhani’s plying on the Northern Railway network in the current financial year,” says Rajiv Saxena, the Chief Public Relations Officer of Northern Railways. “There has been no negative feedback so far. However, CRIS will carry out an evaluation and glitches, if any, will be ironed out before the project is expanded,” he adds. Northern Railways has been sanctioned Rs 5.47 crore for the project.

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