The Indian Railways on Wednesday launched an online application, RailRadar, which tracks details of 6,500 trains running across the country on a real-time basis on Google Maps. This is the first sort of initiative taken in the history of a railway board.
"The live tracker is shown on an interactive map which permits users to watch the movements of trains running across the country," a railway official said to The Times of India.
The Rail Radar system, a live tracker of the trains, was developed by PSU Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) in a tie-up with Rail Yatri. The system will enable the user to track train timings, locations, stoppages and routes. To track any train on the new system a person is not required to remember the train number or the name, as just the entry of two station names will give the user details of the train.
"You no longer have to remember train numbers," the official said to Press Trust of India, adding "just enter any two station names (like Delhi to Bhubaneswar) and it will bring all the trains available on that route."
At present, the system is introduced as a pilot project and would soon become a permanent facility in the country. The Rail Radar works using a colour code system. When a person tracks a train status by giving necessary information, the trains will be highlighted either in blue or in red. The blue indicates that the train is on time while red points out that the train is running behind the scheduled time.
Besides this, the zoom in and zoom out feature of the system will allow the user to see the exact station where the train was stopped and can also get the information like the expected time to reach a particular station and the departure time.
The Indian Railways operates around 10,000 trains in the country. The users can access the new system, which tracks details over half the number of these trains, through the railway website trainenquiry.com.
