Passengers need not wait in long queues to buy tickets during peak hours at Dindigul railway station anymore as the Southern Railway commissioned two Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) on Friday. They can now swipe a smart card and book second class unreserved tickets for passenger, express and superfast trains and renew season tickets.
Inaugurating the ATVMs at Dindigul station, the 67{+t}{+h}station in Southern Railway region and the second in Madurai division, Divisional Railway Manager Sunil Kumar Garg said that 27 stations would get this facility in a phased manner.
The ATVMs would start functioning at Virudhunagar, Ramanathapuram, Rameswaram and Tirupparankundram railways stations in a day or two. “We will expedite installation work in other stations,” he said.
These machines would act as additional ticket booking counters to reduce the time taken to buy unreserved tickets and platform tickets. It would take only less than a minute to get tickets through the ATVMs, he added.
Senior Divisional Commercial Manager S.T. Ramalingam said that passengers could buy smart cards from railway booking office.
The minimum price was Rs. 100, of which Rs. 50 would be security deposit. Recharging at least once in a year would help maintain the card’s life time validity. Top-up recharge could be done for Rs. 20 or in the multiples of Rs. 50 to a maximum of Rs. 5,000. Passengers would get five per cent bonus for journey tickets up to a maximum travel distance of 150 km. Name of the prime stations would appear on the touch screen. Passengers could get unreserved tickets for all stations. Cancellation of tickets was possible only before printing the ticket. One could get platform tickets for four persons at a time. Deposit would not be refunded for loss of cards, he added.
With installation of two ATVMs, the total number of counters at Dindigul station rose to six. Station Manager S. Mariappan and other officials accompanied the DRM.
