There has been an increase in the railway bookings over the period with many of them going under the RAC lists or waiting lists. The passengers are allotted a number known as "PNR" (Passenger Number Record) that helps them check the status of their reservation. With such an increase in the bookings, there has been a tremendous growth in the enquiry of the PNR status by the passengers. To make things more comfortable for the passengers, online reservation and PNR enquiry check had been started. This service has currently taken a great toll and has reduced the interference of the middle men and agents. There are no more long queues waiting to book the tickets as this could be easily done at the comfort of your house or home.
With this, there have been many methods that have come up to determine the status of your reservation. Some of the methods for PNR enquiry are:
A phone enquiry set up by the Indian Railways Department which is completely free with the number 139. This number can be dialed from the MTNL landlines, BSNL landlines, Spice Telecom, Idea and other telecom operated phones. An SMS enquiry to fetch the PNR status: "PNR " to 5888 or 57886 or 5676747
The PNR status can be checked online on the Indian Railways website with various other websites.
139 passenger information system on SMS - This service helps you to send an enquiry for information regarding railways (like fare, accommodation, PNR Status, etc...).
With so many ways available, it has been made quite easy for the passengers to know their current PNR status from different sources. Such availability reduces the time of the passengers and they are not bound to use a single channel for their enquiry.