Get your favourite food delivered on your berth during your next Rail journey

To please your taste buds, the new version of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited has launched the e-catering scheme which would deliver food in trains from more than 500 restaurants across various stations in the country.

Indian Railway's online travel portal www.irctc.co.in has recently launched its new website with various new features in an easily accessible yet fancy avatar. From e-wallets, a variety of meals to booking cabs and hotels, the latest version of the website contains all the important tools. This change has been done to make the e-ticketing easier and user-friendly for the users because almost two third of the tickets reserved are through e-ticketing.

However, the website is under trial period for next fifteen days and will roll up finally after working on the feedback received during this period. To go through the changes, one can open www.irctc.co.in which would open the old page of IRCTC with a red icon flashing 'Try New Version Of Website' on the upper left corner, clicking on which would redirect to the new version of the site.

"This change was really required. I have been struggling a lot while booking through the older version of the website for every time I would try to book a Tatkal ticket the website would crash. I hope the new version proves to be helpful," said Rakesh Maurya, a teacher from Chitrakoot.

"I travel from Lucknow to Banda and there used to be no proper meal available on the halting stations. Thanks to the e-catering feature that would help me order food of my choice now," said Shefali Tripathi, a student.

The new versions include:

Waitlist prediction and probability: If you are reserving a waiting ticket you could rely on this new feature which tells you the probable rates of confirmation of your ticket. Though, this feature is already available in many other ticket-booking applications but IRCTC has updated it recently. 'Confirm availability on other trains' will also appear in case you seem to get RAC or waiting in the train you are looking for. This would show you other trains running through the same stations.

Information without login: Unlike the older version, the fresh version of the website lets you go through the features or even book from the variety of services offered by IRCTC without a user-name and password. On the new website, you can easily track trains and look for seat availability without logging in.

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Cab facility: For the hassle free journey up to your exact destination, IRCTC has also introduced the cab cooking feature with collaborating with Ola. After you click 'Service at Stations' followed by 'Book your cab', you will be automatically redirected to the official website of Ola. Further, you can let the website track your location or enter it manually to book a cab.

E-wallet: After an authenticated verification through PAN or Adhar, which would be an online authentication process, one can directly pay through the e-wallet even if the bank goes offline while payment procedure. The e-wallet will have a validity of 3 years from the date of verification after which it could be renewed for free. The minimum amount of money one can add in the e-wallet is 100 rupees while the maximum is 10000 rupees.

E-catering: Just by entering your PNR number and boarding point on the e-catering page under 'Meal' option, you would be able to order from the variety of food choices available for which IRCTC has done a partnership with several restaurants and food joints. The cash on delivery option would be available while you get your food delivered right on your train berth.

Retiring rooms: At the time of booking tickets now we can also book retiring rooms for the minimum duration of 12 hours to maximum 48 hours. The retiring rooms are available in single occupancy, double occupancy and dormitory with AC or non-AC facilities.