The advance train ticket booking facilities in Indian Railway allow the passenger to book their train ticket 120 days or 4 months before the date of journey. You can book a train ticket both online(IRCTC website & IRCTC Official App) or offline 120 days or 4 months before the date of the journey. For booking an online ticket you must have a valid IRCTC account, if you don’t have you can see how to create IRCTC Account and after booking a train ticket you will get an SMS(print your train ticket) from IRCTC. But do you know What happened if you get a Waiting list ticket and what this means? Don’t worry this guide will help you to understand each and everything about the Waiting List ticket.
After booking the train ticket your ticket status will be either one of them,
- Confirmed Berth
- RAC (Reserve Against Cancellation)
- Waiting List
Table of Contents
Types Of Waiting List Tickets & Confirmation Chances
A Waiting List ticket means that you have a ticket to travel but you don’t have a seat to sit while traveling. There are 7 types of Waiting list tickets on Indian Railways and the confirmation chances of getting a waiting list ticket are varied for its category.
The final status of any ticket will come after the chart preparation was done(before 4 hours of train departure). You can get to see each type of waiting list ticket in this post and get a brief idea of what is it and what are the confirmation chances of waiting list tickets.
- RLWL: Remote Location Wait List
- RLGN: Remote Location General Wait List
- RQWL: Request Wait List
- PQWL: Pooled Quota Wait List
- LDWL: Ladies Quota Wait List
- GNWL: General Wait List
- CKWL OR TQWl: Tatkal Quota Wait List
Let us understand each of them in brief what are the possibilities of getting a waiting list tickets to get confirmed.
RLWL: Remote Location Wait List (RLWL)
- Remote Location Wait List (RLWL) means the ticket is issued for intermediate stations (between the originating and destinations). This is because they are important cities or towns on that route.
- The RLWL confirmation chances for tickets depend on the cancellation of the destination confirmed ticket.
- There is no arrangement for RAC tickets.
- There are lesser chances of confirmation.
- Remote location station will also prepare their charts preparation before the actual departure of the train.
Example: If you have booked an RLWL train ticket from Kanpur to Hajipur on a train that starts from New Delhi(Source) to Darbhanga(Destination), your ticket will confirm when the confirmed passenger from Kanpur to Hajipur cancels their ticket.
RLGN: Remote Location General Wait List
- Remote Location General Wait List(RLGN) means the ticket is issued for an intermediate station(not from source) to the destination or nearby destinations stations.
- RLGN confirmation chances are very high because it comes under a general waitlist ticket.
- There is a provision on the RAC ticket.
RQWL: Request Wait List
- Request Wait List(RQWL) means the ticket is booked from one intermediate station to other intermediate stations and if it is not covered by the remote location or pooled or by the general quota then the ticket will go into the RQWL categories.
- RQWL confirmation chances depend on when the person travels from Originating stations to the intermediate stations.
- Tickets will usually be confirmed in these categories.
PQWL: Pooled Quota Wait List
- Pooled Quota Wait List(PQWL) is shared by several small stations. It occurs when the passenger starts their journey from the source or other intermediate stations and aborts their journey to some intermediate station before the destination station of the train.
- Normally it is operated from the Originating stations, and there is only one Pooled Quota for the entire run.
- PQWL confirmation chances are very fewer.
Example: PQWL 50/Wl 5
It means your current status is PQWL 50, where 50 means 50 members are already booked their tickets when there is a waiting list 3.
LDWL: Ladies Quota Wait List
- Ladies Quota Wait List(LDWL) is the waiting list tickets for Ladies.
- LDWL confirmation chances will be low because it confirms when other women cancel their tickets.
GNWL: General Wait List
- General Wait List(GNWL) means the passenger booked their ticket from originating stations or close to originating stations.
- GNWL is for the general quota.
- GNWL has more chances of getting confirmed.
- The high number of seats is booked from Source to Destination, hence there is a huge number of cancellations of the ticket.
- When a RAC ticket is canceled it is allowed to GNWL
Example: GNWL 7/ WL 6
It means you have a waiting list ticket of 7 and your ticket will get confirmed when 6 passengers who have booked their ticket before you will cancel their journey.
CKWL Or TQWL: Tatkal Quota Wait List
- Tatkal Quota Wait List(CKWL) means the passenger booked their ticket in Tatkal and get the waiting list ticket.
- Tatkal ticket directly goes confirmed or doesn’t. It doesn’t undergo RAC status.
- There is no waiting list ticket after chart preparation.
- During chart preparation, GNWL is preferred over CKWL.
- TQWL confirmation chances are very low.
Which Waitlist Ticket gets Confirmed First
As we have discussed above various types of Waiting List tickets and now we can see which waiting list ticket has high confirmation chances. The sequence is listed below in ascending order.
- GNWL Has Very High Confirmation Chances
- RLGN Has High Confirmation Chances
- RLWL Has Low Confirmation Chances
- PQWL Has Low Confirmation Chances
- CKWL OR TQWL Has Very Low Confirmation Chances
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
You don’t need to do anything to get your refund. Simply cancel your ticket by the above-described steps and you will get the refund of your ticket on the same bank account from which you have made the payment for booking your ticket.
Normally the banks take time to process the refund in
For Net- Banking/Wallets/Cash Cards transaction: 3-4 business days.
For Credit Card/Debit Card transaction: 6-7 business days.
But before canceling your train ticket you must be aware of the ticket cancellation charges of IRCTC.
We can Book Train Tickets From IRCTC Website and from offline which is at the Railway counter. But to book an online train ticket firstly we have to register on the IRCTC website. This will take no more than 5 minutes to complete the registration process of account creation. Go through the given link to create an IRCTC account.
It is necessary to show your ticket while traveling on the train. Whether it is in Hard Copy or soft copy(on your phone). Here you can see how to print IRCTC tickets from IRCTC’s new website. You can also show the message received from IRCTC. To get the printout of your ticket follow the below steps.
Do you know you can book your train ticket from both IRCTC Website as well as IRCTC App?