Friday, December 9 2005 16:11 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Integrated Train Enquiry System (ITES) will be set up by providing call centres throughout the country to provide service round-the-clock, Rajya Sabha was informed today (Dec 09, 2005).

Minister of state for Railways, R Velu said in a written reply that two call centres at Patna and Bangalore have already been made operational on trial basis.

The locations of the call centres, which would not be internet-based, have not been decided so far, he said.

The main features of the call centres would be a universal telephone number 139 which will be provided without prefixing any Subscriber Trunk Dialing (STD) code to get connected to the call centre, Velu said.

Both Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) and manual enquiry will disseminate information on train running status, reservation status of passenger and availability of accomodation.

Bio-diesel: Preliminary studies, including field trials, have been done for running diesel locomotives on bio-diesel, but it is premature to estimate savings at this stage, as bio-diesel is presently not available in substantial quantities, he said.

Climate: Velu said climatic changes over the subcontinent in time scale of 30-to-50 years are not likely to effect the rail network to any significant level.