RailYatri App Review

Summer vacation is on and it's time to visit hometown or go for vacations. Maximum number of people in India plans to have a comfy train journey. If you are someone who travels a lot in train or has family members who do so or you are planning to travel this summer, there’s something in store that will make life easier.

If you haven’t done yet, download the Indian Rail IRCTC and PNR Status App now. It is called RailYatri and is available for web, iOS and Android users.

It is an all in one place. You can check your PNR status, Book at meal, check train schedule, and even weather condition and forecast for the place you are visiting. I tried testing it and it looked extremely handy for multiple info regarding train travel.

It is so easy now to check PNR status with RailYatri. There are options where you can check the record of trains, like the most delayed trains of all times etc. We can even hire a cab from the same app, which will be booked at your destination. 

I also tried the app, when I was in Mumbai. It was a surprise to even find local train details, which I hadn't expected. If you want to check details about train timings or anything regarding the trains in any other city, you can manually do that in the city setting section. You can feed in the details of your location and the routes you are looking to travel, and it is all available.

The apps too are very user friendly. Knowing the latest update on the location, status and current schedule of all trains in a region is very helpful while travelling and also to track the journey of someone you need to pick or drop at the station. If you want to see more, zoom out, and you see the rail network of the entire city, or zoom in if you want to see particular stations alone.

In case you are wondering which is the station closer in proximity from your location, it is easy, and you get lot of additional useful info about nearest food places, especially the ones run by IRCTC. In fact details about cloak rooms operating time and facilities is listed too. 

What I loved most is the love tracking of trains. It is fabulous. Live tracking is super fun and you are so up to date. ETA, timetable, nearby trains, map, current location and status of the train, delay status, and even the stations that are on the route, isn’t it cool.

The RailYatri app has a Live Announcements section, where it mentions if there are any cancellations that have just taken place, or whether the route or time of any trains have changed, You can locate those trains through the in built Google maps too.

Well, if that is not enough, you even have the facility to check the estimate for travel cost. Is this App awesome! 

There’s a feature in My Trips section, where you can save your recent future trips by adding PNR number. If you don’t want to add PNR number, stress not, you can just click an icon to have the app scan for IRCTC’s sms and automatically save it. It’s a magic button, what appears on screen helps you to get the latest train schedule, PNR status, seat availability and even information about tickets that are not yet confirmed with a forecast about them. They have humungous data of past bookings through which they are able to guess estimate whether that ticket has chances of getting confirmed or not. Of course there’s no 100 percent guarantee of these forecast to come true, but then no harm in going through a tested guess apart from your own wild guess.

Once you're on board the train, you can also use the speedometer and GPS train locator options to track your journey.

A new feature now is for the hungry souls and foodies. People love the Meal order and hire a taxi to pick features in the app, it seems. These services are catered through vendors like RailTiffin, Travel Khaana, and Yatra Chef for food, and Taxi For Sure and Cel Cabs for taxis. In both cases, the RailYatri app triggers a callback from the service provider, who then arranges the pickup/ delivery. See here about the Food Ordering Feature in the app. 

Like the regular home delivery apps, where you register with your address and other details, for food delivery through RailYatri, you need to give the train name or number and details of travel date. You have the option to ask for a call back. Similarly to book a cab to pick you from destination, you just have to enter the destination name and time and request for call back. Of course there’s a verification process of your number with the app.

Hopefully these services could become directly through the app to book food or cab online there itself.

The app is absolutely free, and so you get umpteen pop up commercials coming up. Sometimes I feel the design of the pages is very boring, and the features are on the face. But it cannot be denied that it is a very useful app, especially the live tracking of trains.