Wouldn't it be nice if the Railways called you up to tell you that you had a flight today or even sent you a message saying that your train had been delayed by a few hours and save you the few precious hours of waiting on the crowded platforms? This is not going to remain a fantasy for very long since the Indian Railways has planned to provide a few services, personalised for your convenience to go on par with the airlines.

In the purported list of services are a wake-up call, in collaboration with RailYatri.in, and other alert messages to your phones. RailYatri and Center of Railway Information Systems, CRIS, have joined hands to work on real time information regarding the train's expected arrival at a certain station. This information will now be used to serve the people with wake up calls, schedule changes, cancelation or delay of trains via SMS. RailYatri.in founder and CEO Manish Rathi says that the potential information can be used to arrive at the station on time.

It is already known that RailYatri.in has been presenting details of routes, and precise locations of the trains in real time with updated information of over 6,500 trains at any point of time virtually working as a Rail Radar.

Passengers will soon have the luxury of getting personalised information regarding their own train without the hassles of hunting and scouting the enormous amount of unrelated info out there on the internet. Android apps will also be developed to make it better. The services are expected to join iPhone, Blackberry and other phone platforms soon after.

(AW- Anil)