If you want to find trains on IRCTC (online railway booking website) quickly with confirmed availability of seats than you must follow the instructions given here.
After reading and following the instruction given here you will almost always get a confirmed reservation in one of the available trains between the two stations you desire to travel.
So, let's get started. (Note: there is no need to login on irctc pages for finding trains, availability and fare).
Step 1. Go to railway website train search section by using the following link https://www.irctc.co.in/nget/train-search. You will see something like this, a form that helps you search trains online.
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| form for searching trains between the stations |
Step 2: Now enter all the details in fields provided on the form. Two fields, namely "From" and "To" are mandatory to fill in order to search a train. Other fields are "Date", "Class of Travel", and there are couple of other options viz "Flexible With Date" and "DIVYAANG".
While it's almost self explanatory that you will need to enter the source station in "From" field and destination station in "To field", the other two options provide you extra flexibility while finding trains which have 100 percent seat available for reservation.
When you select "Flexible with Date" you get list of trains for not only the day on which you wish to commence your journey but also for next few days. This is extremely useful as it powers you with more options while selecting a train for doing railway reservations.
Have a look at the snapshot of list of trains below which appears after we submitted train search form on irctc.co.in site.
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| list of trains displayed after submitting train search form on irctc website |
For example, sometimes a passenger is not aware there are more trains available on a particular route which suits him better in terms of schedule and availability of classes.
"DIVYAANG" option is used by physically handicapped people who get special reservation quota in each trains. This allows them to book their train tickets quickly and easily.
Step 3: Now hat you have a comprehensive list of trains, you can proceed further and actually check the availability in a particular class and fare. Just select the class in a particular train by using the dropdown list and click on button with caption "check availability and fare".
This will give you the train fare and availability status/ position in that train on your date of journey (see pic below)
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| railway fare and availability |
As you can see that not only seat availability for next 6 days is displayed, fare is also displayed in a box in top right hand corner.
If you see closely you can see "Next Days availability" with arrow pointing towards right and "Previous Days availability" with arrow pointing towards left. Using these two arrows you can find seat availability for next 6 days and previous 6 days in addition to seat availability that is displayed already.
Last option on this page is "Confirm Availability on Alternate trains". This option when used lists more trains between the same stations, other than the train you have already chosen, and shows you availability status on those trains.
So, suppose there is a waiting list running on a particular trains you can quickly check on alternate trains what is the status. And book your trains tickets.
That's it!
You now know the only 3 steps that you will ever need to book a confirmed railway tickets on IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) next generation eTicketing system.