Thanks to Indian Railways

Today Morning I was booking a train ticket read something that got me into big simle. Thanks to Indian Railways for being intelligent and considering this.

One of the passenger booked on an E-ticket is required to present any of the five identity cards noted below in original during the train journey and same will be accepted as a proof of identity failing which all the passengers will be treated as travelling without ticket and shall be dealt as per extant Railway Rules. Valid Ids:- Voter Identity Card / Passport / PAN Card / Driving License / Photo ID card issued by Central / State Govt. for their employees.

This is awesome. At least that we would not have paid all those fines. :) But still I envy those Chennai guys that they have soo so many trains from Bangalore. Just that they get tickets for any weekend at ease.

Easter Egg - 90 days advance booking IRCTC

Today (July 24th) I was deep asleep after watching few episodes of prison break and around 9am (apparently close to midnight) I got a call from my friend.

Friend: Vijesh, Did you book the tickets?
Me: What.... What ticket?
Friend: Ticket for Diwali (in train) opened today.
(...gives me a mild shock and sit up)
Me: No, I guess its not today. I'm keeping track, few more days to go.
Friend: No, it opened today and sleeper is already in waiting list (WL) so we booked in AC. Hope its fine with you.
Me: Yeah ok.

Dragging myself to a system near by to check my Google calender reminder and IRCTC online reservation for Oct 24th. Well something was wrong. It was not really 90 days for tickets to open for booking. Since I lost my love towards Coimbatore Express after the night stay at the train station. I always ignored that train and tried with Kanyakumari express (6526). Still it says given date is out of range for booking. Then gave it a try in Coimbatore Express(1013). This query seems to work fine and says tickets are in WL, Ah! that's strange. With some trails I inferred that Coimbatore Express starts 2 days earlier from Lokmanya Thilak. So apparently the booking software allowed to book for all stations that the train traveled on that date itself. So Bangalore that comes on the third day opens two days before they actually do.

How many would know this? Still, have mailed Customer Care! Let me see how they respond. Ideally only those stations that are exactly 90 days before the train reaches should show up for booking. Guess the engineer was lazy to have this boundary condition in place. I would call it an pseudo Easter Egg.