Tuesday 28 April 2009

To what extent you can bank on Railways website?

My parents planned to catch a 10AM train to Mysore from Bengaluru. Just to make sure that train is running as per schedule, I just quickly hit Southern Railway website and checked about the train. It showed that train is departing as per schedule and it reaches Mysore around 1.45PM.

When my parents reached ticket counter at Bengaluru raliway station, railway official said that train does not reach Mysore, instead it will terminate at a station called Naganahalli because of some repair work being carried out in Mysore station. As the next train was at 2.15PM, my parents had no option but to take the ticket till Naganahalli.

I just wondered if I misread in the website and again hit the railway website and checked. To my surprise, this is what it looked like:



As you can see, I have queried for today's date (28th Apr) and it clearly says that train reaches at 14:20 (It is expected arrival). To add to it, this report was last updated at: 13:33, 28 Apr 2009.

I was just thinking if the decision of terminating the train before Mysore was taken very recently. To verify that, I again did googling and I got to know that Railways had already released a press note on 22nd April about the changes in the train services.

That means, the above site is not updated! And whatever timings it displays could be one of those calculations implemented in a program!

I now wonder to what extent we can bank on this website! If railways has created a website with so much of information, it really needs a pat on the back. But it should also keep updating these information. Out-of-date information is worse than not providing any information.

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