RailEnquiry

For the benefit of passengers, railways will now provide nationwide live status of fog affected trains on its portal. The facility is available in events.trainenquiry.com/fog and the site updates information every two to 10 mins. "The initiative enables passengers to make smart

decisions with updated information on trains as well as routes affected by fog," said a statement issued by Centre for Rail Information Systems (CRIS) and RailYatri.in, which is powering the website. It categorises information like ‘fog reporting on routes in last 24 hours', 'currently running fog affected trains’, ‘cancellations and diversions’ and ‘trains rescheduled from origination’.

Fog induced delays during winter is a major cause of concern not only for the passengers but for the railways too.

Passengers travelling via Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi and Punjab are worst hit during this season, with delays going up to even 24 hours.

Northern railways have already cancelled a number of services to handle movement of traffic in inclement weather effectively.

"Decisions of planning or travelling via trains can be smarter, if information reaches passengers on time. With this initiative, we not only bring train information but also route, station status," said group general manager of CRIS Sunil Bajpai.

"This is a pilot and based on the success we can also experiment to see how other weather issues can be communicated," added Sunil Bajpai.