The Tinsukia division of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) became the first division on Tuesday to introduce Hand Held Terminal (HTT) for onboard Train Ticket Examiners (TTEs).
The Indian Railway has recently launched the HHT seeking to bring in greater transparency in ticket-checking system on running train.
“The first batch of TTE with HHT ran on 12423 Rajdhani Exp from Dibrugarh reently. Gradually the service will be extended to all trains having reserved coaches. This tablet device which cost about Rs 25,000/- per set allow the TTEs of a running train to send real-time information to the Passenger Reservation System (PRS) through GPRS and the vacant berth will be allotted to waitlisted passengers on subsequent stations, thereby increasing the chances of waitlisted and RAC ticket holder to get confirmed berths,” said NFR chief Public Relation Officer, Pranav Jyoti Sharma.
“It helps to make rail journey more enjoyable and hassle-free. With the help of Hand Held Terminals for TTEs, after all allotments is done, remaining vacant berths position will be sent back to HHT Application Servers and can be viewed on PRS terminal as well as web site (indianrail.gov.in) and information of all wait listed passengers will be sent to coaching refund system to get speedier refund and eliminate the preparation of manual Exception Data Reports (EDR),” he said.
“Occupancy chart can be viewed on HHT device to dispense with the manual preparation of food-chart / occupancy chart. This would help Indian Railways to better utilize its capacity in case a passenger fails to board the train or cancel his/her ticket before the preparation of the chart. The initiative is environment friendly and will save tons of paper and manpower which is presently being used for chart printing at every location. Handing over of manually printed passenger chart to next batch of TTEs of a running train will also be dispensed with,” Sharma added.
The salient features of the HHT device are:
- HHT downloads source charts and current booking list through GPRS
- It also downloads charts of remote locations on train through GPRS
- Downloads list of after-charting cancelled passengers at every hour from departure time
- HTT has provision to mark attendance of passengers in any coach
- Allows for status upgrade – Class upgrade/downgrade and alternate berth allotment
- The new device will also replace paper charts with e-charts and enable computerization of on-board passenger interface operations.