All about Wait-listed tickets

One of the usual services I do is the 139 Railway inquiry for probability assessment of a Waitlisted (WL) ticket getting cleared. Following matters act as a guide for an amateur traveller in this assessment:


1. All Waitlisted tickets carry a xx/xx format at the time of booking. First number is the sequential number (to be used to locate the status in the chart) and the second number is the status as at the time of booking the ticket. First number is a running number, i.e it will be WL 2 when a ticket gets booked after it has reached WL 1. It will never come back to WL1. However, second number is not sequential, it can go up and come back to WL 2 or WL 1 any number of times, depending on the cancellations and bookings.

a. RAC 15 / AVAILABLE means the availability touched RAC once but due to cancellations, confirmed accommodation (berths / seats) is available now

b. WL 15 / AVAILABLE means the availability touched WL once but due to cancellations, confirmed accommodation (berths / seats) is available now, this is very rare

c. WL 15 / RAC 15 means the availability touched WL once but due to limited cancellations, accommodation is available only as RAC – seat confirmed in a Side Lower berth, but berth not confirmed. You have to ‘sit’ in the lower berth seat along with another person occupying the opposite seat.

d. WL 15 / WL 2 means the availability touched WL once but due to limited cancellations, accommodation is right now not available, it is still in WL, but WL number 2

e. REGRET / AVAILABLE means the WL status has reached the maximum (set by Railways for each train, usually around 300) however due to heavy cancellations, confirmed tickets are available now. But, these tickets can be purchased only from PRS counters.

2. The next step (rather the first step if ticket is not booked yet) is to collect full information about the train you are travelling:

a. How many coaches are there in the particular class? Eg, 2637 Pandiyan has 4 3A coaches, whereas 6723 Anantapuri has only 2.

b. How many berths / seats are available for general public in general . You need to check availability for a non-festival-affected-weekday around 100 / 110 days from the date of analysis to ascertain this number. E.g. Pandiyan has 130+ 3A berths in General Quota and 23 in Pooled Quota. You will get the berths in other quotas by deducting this number from the total berths using formula ‘# of coaches * berths per coach'. SL has 72, 3A has 64, 2S has 108 etc.

c. What quota are you in? The usual quotas are:

i. General Quota (GN) – has the largest availability, usually around 70% and is not for short distance bookings (Eg, Madras to Jolarpet in Cheran Exp, which is intended for travellers to Tiruppur and beyond). When cancellations happen , GNWL is cleared first

ii. Tatkal (CK) – cleared against vacancies in CKWL first, then if availability is still there, cleared against GNWL. With the one-day short turn-around and refund being zero for confirmed CK tickets, probability calculation is very difficult.

iii. Pooled Quota (PQ) – intended for short distance tavellers, very very limited. No RAC in this quota. Cleared against PQWL vacancies first, then if availability is still there, cleared against GNWL.

iv. Road-side Location Quota (RL) – for long distance trains that serve a number of stations (Eg, 6107 Madras - Mangalore Exp has Tiruchi and Coimbatore as RL locations) - Try checking the availablility from Tiruchi Jn to Madras and Tiruchi Fort station to Madras - both are in the same city (the former comes in Tiruchi Jn RL quota, whereas the latter comes in Kulittalai/Karur RL quota)!!

d. Usually 80 tickets are earmarked in Sleeper Class as ‘for RAC’ apart from the general availability (usual formula is # of coaches in the intended class * 10 for SL (max 80) *8 for 3A, *3 for 2A)

3. The next step is to examine the booking status – if it is say WL 50 / WL 5, it means:

a. Full availability booked once before you booked / book
b. Full RAC exhausted (N/A for sitting trains like Shatabdi or Brindavan)
c. WL has gone upto 50, so 80+50 = 130 additional tickets booked, 45 have got cancelled so the WL status is now at 5.

d. Depending on the time period available, if it is say booked 3 months in advance and you still have 2 months to go – it is usually a sure-shot ‘confirmed’ case (CNF). You can see that to reach CNF status, we have 5+80 = 85 more tickets to be cancelled in 2 months’ time! This is more than enough – please note that unscrupulous travel agents allegedly book tickets in bogus names in popular trains to make sure that they are always ‘retained in Heavy WL status’ so that travellers can fall into their trap of ‘sure-shot-will-confirm’ WL tickets under the assumption that they have some contacts who can clear it internally. They do not know that when the travel agents bulk cancel their unsold tickets, their WL will get confirmed automatically!

e. Final status will be available at the point of charting – this is when all unutilized quotas (Ladies, Defence, Head Office, Rly employee, Foreign Tourist, MLA/MP, Senior Citizens) will be released for clearing Waitlists. At that point, if the status is something like RS10, 15 or RB2, 15 – it means the ticket is in RAC only (R prefix to the coach number and berth number)

4. Miscellaneous information:

a. An e-ticket cannot be moved ‘internally’

b. The rule of the thumb is as far as possible, book in GNWL. You can afford to pay more and get down at an intermediate station – hunt for trains that are intended for the destination station first.

c. Try exploring quotas – you can get a CNF ticket by booking two tickets in Bombay Mail as Madras – Mantralayam Road and Mantralayam Road – BBVT if Madras – BBVT ticket is not available in that quota.

d. Frequent travellers who reach station early are encouraged to scan through the final charts displayed in the notice boards on a Friday-before-festival or Sunday-after-festival to know the worst case scenario of WL clearance (look out of the last ‘first-WL-sequential-number’ that has got cleared to CNF status, if you have a lesser WL number on a normal day, it is sure-shot CNF).

e. You CANNOT board a reservation coach with a waitlisted e-ticket (treated as w/o ticket as you get an automatic refund) or an open ticket bought at UTS counter (will be chucked out at Arakkonam, Gudur or Chengalpattu as applicable). If you have made up your mind to 'be okay' with a WL ticket whatever it may be, please (for heaven's sake) buy a 'counter ticket' across the counters in one of the PRS centers even if it is WL400 - not through internet. Usually (I repeat usually) TTEs do not ask people with PRS WL tickets to get down - they normally ask them to 'wait near door' until their routine check is complete. For maintaining a politically correct stand, I cannot document what happens next - regular travellers know it better.

5. You can now estimate the probability of a WL ticket getting confirmed all by yourself - it all needs some practice and patience. Finally, one final word of caution :) *Conditions apply!!