Passengers on Indian Railways have a new way to plan their travel.

National Train Enquiry System, an Indian Railways sponsored website, has undergone a major overhaul in the past few months. What was once a clunky outdated service has transformed into a user friendly application with real time status updates on more than 8,000 Indian Railways trains.

Users can access National Train Enquiry System (NTES) on any internet enabled desktop or mobile device. Compatible devices such as iPhone or Blackberry will automatically connect to the TrainEnquiry.com mobile app. It’s free to use and optimized for touch screen devices.

Information provided on National Train Enquiry System is collected across India by the Centre for Railway Information Systems in near real time. Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) of the trains is determined by using predictive algorithms.

Details for individually selected trains include:

• Current status of the train; On time / Delayed / Arrived
• Last location and time update
• Previous two stops plus departure timings from stations
• Next two stops and an ETA

Many features from the previous version of National Train Enquiry System have been improved. Most notably and much needed was the search function. The earlier version of NTES required users to type in the exact train number to locate it. Now users may input the train number, train name, the origin/final destination station, or any combination of these to find the appropriate train. Predictive search was also added to the latest version of National Train Enquiry System, meaning the site will suggests trains as the user types, functioning much like major search engines.