Trains Between Stations

How This Search Works

A train counts as direct between two stations if it calls at your origin and then calls at your destination later in the same run. It does not need to start or finish at either one — most useful trains on any route are passing through. That is why the times shown here are measured at your stations: the departure is when the train leaves your platform, and the arrival is when it reaches your destination, not the train's own terminus.

Journey times account for services that run past midnight, so a train leaving at 23:10 and arriving at 06:40 the next morning is shown as 7h 30m rather than a negative number. Trains that arrive on a later day are flagged in the results.

One Thing That Catches People Out

Booking windows are counted from the train's originating station, never from where you board. General booking opens 60 days before the train starts its run, and Tatkal one day before that. On a pass-through service the train may leave its origin a day or more before it reaches you — so counting back from your own boarding date puts you a day late. The Tatkal time calculator handles that correction for you.

Reading the Results

Every column is measured for the two stations you asked about, not for the train's own route. A train that runs Delhi to Trivandrum shows you the Vadodara–Surat leg if that is what you searched.

Running days always refer to the day the train leaves its originating station. A train shown as running on Monday may well reach a mid-route station on Tuesday.

Choosing Between Trains on the Same Route

On a busy corridor the same journey may be offered by thirty or more trains, and the fastest is not automatically the best one to book. A few things worth weighing:

• Arrival time beats journey time. A train that takes an hour longer but lands at 07:00 instead of 04:00 is usually the better ticket. Look at the arrival column first.
• An overnight train saves a hotel night. On journeys over roughly eight hours, a departure between 20:00 and 23:00 with a morning arrival buys you a night's accommodation and a full day at the other end.
• Fewer halts usually means a better night's sleep as much as a faster run — Rajdhani and Duronto services stop at a handful of stations, ordinary expresses at dozens.
• Check the running days before the timing. A perfect 22:10 departure is no use if it runs on Tuesdays and you travel on Thursdays.
• Mid-route boarding means a mid-route quota. Trains allot only a share of berths to intermediate stations, so a train that starts where you board often has better availability than one passing through, even when both look equally convenient here.

Once you have a shortlist, the schedule checker gives you the full station-by-station timetable for any one of them, and our route guides cover 5 popular station pairs in full.

Train Categories, and What They Tell You

The name carries real information about speed, stops, classes and fare. These are the categories you will see most often in the results.

When Booking Opens for Your Route

Every window below is counted from the moment the train leaves its originating station — never from your own boarding station, and never from your arrival.

This is where mid-route travellers lose seats. If a train starts on the 9th and reaches your station on the 10th, its Tatkal window opened on the 8th — a day earlier than counting back from your own travel date would suggest. Work out the exact moment with the Tatkal time calculator, and the charting time with the chart preparation calculator.

If Your Train Isn't Listed

Four reasons a service you expected might not appear:

• It isn't direct. This search only lists trains that call at both of your stations on the same run. Journeys with a change are not shown — try searching in two legs through a major junction on the way.
• The station code is different from the one you expected. Big cities have several stations, and they are not interchangeable: Mumbai alone has CSMT, BCT, MMCT, LTT, BDTS and DR. Pick from the suggestions rather than typing a code from memory.
• It is a new or special train we have not picked up yet. Specials in particular appear and vanish at short notice.
• We hold its route but not its timings at both of your stations. Those trains are still listed — they just sort below the timed ones and show a dash instead of a time.

For scale, this search currently covers 6,306 trains calling at 4,631 stations, across 136,664 individual station stops.

Station Codes Worth Knowing

You can search by name, but codes are faster and unambiguous — and essential in cities with more than one terminus.

Booking to the wrong terminus is a common and expensive mistake — CSMT and MMCT are seven kilometres and a different railway zone apart.