Indian Railways on Wednesday launched a new app which will allow the passengers to access information on expected arrival and departure timings of a particular train on their mobile phones and also track the position of a train on a real time basis.

A senior official said that the new mobile app has been launched by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the information and technology arm of railways.

National Train Enquiry System (NTES) is back-end system of Indian Railways and it is responsible for providing information to the public about train schedules on a near real time basis through various interfaces like nationwide unique rail enquiry number 139, website (www.trainenquiry.com), mobile interfaces, touch screens, enquiry counters and display boards at stations.

An interface of NTES website and its mobile version was launched in September 2013. A senior Railway official said that the train enquiry system has been enhanced by CRIS by developing the mobile app and a desktop application on Windows 8 platform with support from Microsoft.

The new app has got the 'spot your train' feature which offers information such as its current position, expected time of arrival and departure at a particular station.

The 'Train Schedule' feature gives a user complete schedule of a train with all stoppages enroute and its scheduled arrival/departure at the station, distance and day count.

In 'Trains between Stations' query, you can find out the list of all types of trains available between any two stations on railway network.

The App has been launched for Windows 8.0 phones and will be further developed for other mobile platforms.