Platform ticket vending machine

Platform ticket vending machine
Vijay Times

You have reached the station at the nick of the moment and are running around for coins to add up to Rs 3 to buy a platform ticket. The train in which your friend is travelling has begun to chug in/out.

Wish the platform machine accepted coins of any denomination to give you that ticket as long as the amount tallied. You wished it right. The City railway station is now up with this facility.

The South Western Railway’s new technology machine allows one to insert a combination coins of different denominations and delivers a ticket when the amount tallies.

“We have installed two such platform machines at the station and soon more such machines will be installed at the car parking area of the second entry,” said a senior railway official.

What’s more? The platform tickets will be available at the car parking area too.

The ‘smart car parking’, the semi-automated system being readied at the second entrance, allows people to enter the car number on the machine and swipe a prepaid smart card to get a platform ticket and a parking ticket. To begin with, people can use coins to get them both.

Passengers can purchase smart cards at counters and use them during the validity period, a source from Hectronic India said. The machine operates with solar power and is weather proof.

The installation of the German machine by Hectronic India will be the first such in Asia. While the automated car parking facility would be ready by December 20, the platform ticket vending machines will be inaugurated in two to three days’ time.