What Do PNR, GNWL, CKWL, RSWL mean on train tickets? All About Railway codes

Abbreviations for Indian Railways

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PNR:

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PNR stands for Passenger name record. It is a 10 digit unique number generated when a passenger book train tickets online/offline and consists details like passenger name, gender, and age with a seat number, train name, and number, booking status, current status, arrival and boarding time, source station and destination stations, etc.

Generally, it is printed at the top left corner of the printed tickets issued by the railways and serves a variety of purposes. It functions as a unique identifier for a particular journey, allowing passengers to check their reservation status, seat allocation, and departure details through online platforms or at station kiosks. Additionally, railway staff utilize PNR numbers to manage passenger data efficiently, facilitating tasks such as ticket verification, seat allocation, and passenger tracking.

In essence, it streamlines the  entire ticketing process, ensuring a smoother travel experience for all involved parties and it is recommended to check your pnr status before boarding the train to avoid confusions and hassles on your journey. 

GNWL: GNWL stands for General Waiting List. These are the tickets that are waitlisted and issued only after the passengers cancel their confirmed bookings. This type of ticket has got high chances of confirmation and is one of the most common types of the waiting list for train tickets.

CKWL: It stands for the waiting list in the tatkal quota of Indian Railways. CK is the code name for Tatkal Quota in the Indian Railway reservation system. Tatkal tickets are the tickets that usually open before a day. CKWL is a kind of waiting list in IRCTC. For tatkal tickets, the waiting list issues as CKWL instead of GNWL.

RSWL: It stands for Roadside Station Waiting List (RSWL) that is allowed when seats are booked by the departure station for routes up to the roadside station and where distance doesn’t matter. This type of waiting list has very less chances of getting a confirmed ticket. 

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PQWL: It stands for Pooled Quota Waitlist. This is also a type of waiting list that is shared by several small railways stations. This type of quota is assigned to those passengers who travel from the origination station to a railways station short of the termination station, or when a passenger is travelling from the middle station to the termination station, or between the intermediate railways' stations. It is a completely separate waitlist from the general waitlist.

RLWL: It stands for Remote Location Waiting List. It is one of the categories of Indian Railways in which train tickets are allotted to passengers for intermediate railways stations. It is only when a particular famous town is coming on the route of the train. These waitlisted tickets are given utmost priority and the confirmations of these tickets depend on the cancelled tickets. In this category, the remote location railway stations make their own list 2-3 hours before the actual departure of the train. Chances are quite less to avail confirmed tickets in this category

RQWL: It stands for Request Waiting List and it is that ticket when booked from an intermediate station to another intermediate station. When the ticket is not covered by the general quota or pooled quota, this ticket request may go into a Request Waiting List.