To provide respite to the passengers standing in long queues for booking tickets, North Central Railway is planning to install automatic ticket vending machines (ATVM) at the stations.

The passengers will simply have to insert 'Smart Card' into the ATVM machines and the ticket will be printed within seconds.

Giving information about the plan, chief public relations officer of North Central Railway Naveen Babu informed, "About 222 automatic ticket vending machines will be installed at the different stations of NCR spreading across the Allahabad, Jhansi and Agra divisions.

Out of this 147 will be smart card machines while the remaining 75 will be versatile machine. The former will be operated through Smart card while the latter can be operational both through smart cards and even through coins."

The AVTMs will be installed at Allahabad, Kanpur, Agra, Jhansi, Gwalior, Aligarh, Mirzapur, Fatehpur and other stations. ATVM are touch screens based ticketing kiosks operated using smart cards. The passengers can purchase and recharge smart cards from the ticket counters. The smart card has to be placed on a slot in the ATVM and the user has to select the starting station, route and the destination using the touch screen. After confirming the details, the ticket is printed and delivered. Once the ticket is issued, charge is debited from the Smart Card.

The smart card may be availed from the smart card counter nearby the ATVM machine at the railway station. There will be a security deposit for smart card, which can be recharged. As far as operation of versatile AVTM is concerned, it can be operated both through smart card and also through coins. This is beneficial at small stations where passengers travel less distance.

The passenger simply has to enter railway fare by putting the coins inside the machine and the ticket will be printed. Throughout the country, Indian Railways (IR) will install 5594 ATVM in, which 3594 will be smart card based while the remaining 2000 machines will be of versatile category.