Hey guys, it's been a long time since I've written a blog. Please pardon my absence; I was preoccupied with some work. So, coming back to the matter, what will you tell me about your experience reserving a seat on IRCTC? I'm guessing that most of you will give it a 6 or 7 on a scale of 1-10. You will describe it as one of the most inept and clumsy ticket booking websites. But what if I told you it's a fantastic portal?
Have you ever thought about how the berths are booked on the railways? Why does the IRCTC not allow you to choose seats?
Would you believe that the technical reason behind this is PHYSICS?
Booking a seat on a train is far different from booking a seat in a theatre.
A theatre is a hall, whereas a train is a moving object. As a result, safety concerns on trains are extremely high. The Indian Railways ticket booking software is designed in such a way that it would book tickets in such a way that the load on a train is evenly distributed. For example, to make things clearer, imagine there are sleeper class coaches in a train numbered S1, S2, S3,... S10, and in every coach, there are 72 seats, so when someone first books a ticket, the software will assign a seat in the middle coach, like S4, with a middle seat numbered between 35-45, and preferably lower berths (Railways first fill the lower berths to achieve a low center of gravity.) The software books seats in such a way that all coaches have uniform passenger distribution and seats are filled starting from the middle seats (36) to seats near the gates, i.e., 1-2 or 71-72, in order from lower berth to upper.
Railways want to ensure that each coach has the right balance for equal load distribution. That is why, when you reserve a ticket, you are always assigned an upper berth and a seat numbered around 2-3 or 70, unless you are not replacing someone who has cancelled their seat.
What if the trains book tickets at random? A train is a moving object that moves around at a speed of around 100 km/hr on rails. So there are hell lot of forces and mechanics acting on the train. Imagine if S1, S2, and S3 were completely full and S5, S6, and others were partially full. When the train takes a turn, some coaches will face maximum centrifugal force and some minimum, which creates a high chance of derailment.
This is a very technical aspect, and when brakes are applied, there will be different braking forces acting on each of the coaches because of the enormous differences in the weight of the coaches, so the stability of the train becomes an issue again.
So the next time you do not get your preferred seats or berths, you will know what might be the real reason.
Hope you like it.
Ciao!
