Although Indian Railways is known for its punctuality in train running, at times for reasons beyond the control of Indian railways trains get delayed, are rescheduled from their starting station, cancelled or diverted to another route resulting in change in the actual Arrival/Departure time from its scheduled time. To save the inconvenience caused to Rail users due to these changes in train running, National Train Enquiry System (NTES) provides information to public about expected Arrival/Departure of train at each stopping station, train schedule information, information about cancelled trains, diverted trains, and platform berthing information.

The main goal and objective behind NTES system to provide timely and reliable information to general public through user friendly interfaces and PAN India accessibility has been achieved to a large extent and now the information is conveniently and reliably available to public all over the country through various delivery channels i.e. through web browsing, through mobile phone or landline (voice and SMS) and also in person at all IR stations. NTES has won National Award for e-Governance 2010-2011 for Innovative use of ICT by PSUs for customer's benefit and “National Train Enquiry System (NTES)” was adjudged as a Finalist in the Computerworld Honors Program instituted by the Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation, USA. If you have any further questions or suggestions email us at ntes@cris.org.in.

The core NTES application has been developed in Client/ Server Architecture using C language and Sybase ASE version. Application is running on IBM X-series server with Linux as operating system. The servers are in High Availability mode at each site. The train schedule data is divided between the 5 PRS sites (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Secundrabad). Each site performs updates on the trains of its local site only and the data from COA, which is at divisional (69 divisional servers) level also updates data of a train in its local site using EAI tool TIBCO. The data is then replicated to all other sites from the local site using the Sybase replication server. Replication of data serves two purposes. Actual train running Information is available to public through all the delivery channels. Data is available in case of DRIn addition to replication of data between the site wise databases of NTES application, the Sybase replication server replicates data from all five sites to centralized database of call center application hosted on ORACLE database.

The web interface of NTES www.trainenquiry.com used most widely is written in Microsoft DOT net technology with IIS as application server and the database is Microsoft SQL server. The SQL server integration services (SSIS) is used for replicating data from Sybase to Microsoft SQL server.

The National Train Enquiry System (NTES) is part of the commercial applications division within CRIS working under the guidance of S. B. Roy, Director (Passenger Reservation Services). The group is currently led by Seema Kumar, General Manager, an Indian Railway Traffic Service officer with more than 24 years experience. She has been heading the group for five years now. The technical team of the core applications PRS, National Train Enquiry System (NTES) and Rates Branch Software (RBS) is led by Suneeti Goel, Senior Additional General Manager. Ms Suneeti has been heading the group for last 8 years and has more than 22 years experience in the IT industry.