Indian Railways is among the largest railway networks in the world, transporting more than a million passengers along with tonnes of cargo from one place to another every day. To maintain such a system and ensure its proper effectiveness, railways have developed a PNR system for passengers who book a reserved ticket. Thus, PNR is a computerized reservation system database that contains itinerary details of passengers or groups of passengers traveling by trains, buses, railways or domestic and international flights. It is an electronic barcode that contains details of the passenger's date, time, boarding and destination. The booking reference number, also known as PNR, is the Indian Railways' internal identifier for your train booking in their computer systems.
How the PNR is generated
The moment a traveler books a tour, the tour specialist or travel website client creates a PNR in their computerized reservation system. This is normally one of the global distribution systems, but if the booking is made legitimately through the carrier, the PNR may also be in the service provider's CRS database.
This PNR is also known as the master PNR for the passenger along with the associated schedule or itinerary. The PNR is then stored in a specific database by the record locator and when the master PNR holder does not provide the journey segments, at that particular point in time the duplicate PNR data is sent to the CRS of the service provider who will arrange the transport. Computer reservation systems open copies of the first PNR in their database to deal with those parts of the passenger's journey that they are able to.
These Different Carriers have their CRS mediated by one of the GDSs which allows PNR sharing. Although PNRs were originally presented only for air travel, these carrier frameworks can now be additionally used for arranging accommodation, hotels, vehicle rentals, air terminal exchanges and train travel.
How to Check Indian Railways PNR Status?
Online mode
- Go to the official website of Indian Railways.
- To check the current status of your reservation, enter your PNR number in the appropriate field.
- You will get details like train number, departure time and berth status.
Offline mode
In case you don't have internet access, dial 139 from your phone to get PNR details.
Difference between PNR and Itinerary
A travel itinerary is a time schedule of events related to planned travel, comprehensively including the destinations to be visited at the specified times and modes of transportation. A PNR is a specialized term for several or all parts (referred to as segments*) of a timetable. In other words, a plan can have multiple PNRs. PNRs contain at least one segment. PNRs can be booked in one or more Computerized Reservation Systems (CRS) using different channels (eg Global Distribution Systems - GDS). To access these different PNRs in different systems, the Super PNR (sometimes referred to as the Master Itinerary) is important. A Super PNR is like a PNR, in any case it can contain different PNRs that belong to the same PNR.