When You Will Find this Useful

While the internet is probably the easiest way to look at train running times and if trains are running on time, there are times when you have no data left or no signal for good internet.

The SMS Train Running Status is useful when:

• You don’t have internet data on your phone
• You are in an area with phone coverage but don’t have internet coverage – this is true in a lot of more remote areas in India where you often get poor or very slow internet speeds
• You have a non-smart phone which cannot connect to the internet

What Do I Need to Know Before Using This Service?

1. The Train Number: This will be on the ticket, email or SMS you received when you booked the train.
2. The STD dialing of the station city or town: This is optional and is useful if you are looking to find when the train will reach your station

SMS to 139

To know the running status of any train in India, a simple SMS (Short message Service) or text message can get you real time updates. You need to use the default text message service on your phone.
You have 2 options to find out the information you want:

1. If you want to find the present status of the train and last station crossed by the train –
   Send the following SMS to 139:
   “SPOT XXXXX”.
   XXXXX is the train number. You can get the specific train no. information from your train ticket or the text message/email you got when you booked your ticket. You will get a reply SMS within a few seconds with the required information – see the video for help.
2. If you want to find out when your train is arriving at your station-
   Send the following message to 139:“
   AD XXXXX YYYY”.
   XXXXX is the train number (which you can get from your train ticket or the confirmation email/text message).
   YYYY is the STD phone code for the station location. You can find this by asking someone or googling the city name for STD code.
   Again you will get the train arrival time information as an SMS reply within a few seconds.

These SMS services are not free and cost Rs. 3 per enquiry. Advertising Space – After your Hub is published advertisements may be placed in this space.

How This Helped Me

In May 2019, I was stuck at a station without a clue as my train was delayed and I managed to track it by SMS. The online portals were not working well and showed contradicting information for some reason.
I also found it useful after boarding the train to keep track of where my train was the the ETA at my destination station. The online portals were very unpredictable for this particular journey.