A few years ago, you had to go to the railway counter to find out the status of your reserved ticket or to find out about the schedule of trains. Then the whole railway system got computerized and you could check all the information related to any train or reservation, directly from your computer. Now Southern Railway has taken it to one step further.

It recently introduced a new SMS service for railway ticket related enquirers. You can easily check the PNR status of a reserved ticket simply by sending as SMS. A release from southern railways said,

As part of the efforts by Southern Railway to assist passengers in obtaining train-related information, specifically reservation status of tickets, provision has been made to disseminate information through SMS.

To check the PNR status of a ticket, type PNR followed by your 10 digit PNR number, like this,
PNR1234567890 and send the SMS to 139.

This service is available for all mobile service providers except BSNL and Reliance.

Other than checking the PNR status of a ticket, you can also call to this number to get all the information related to a specific train. Also, the call made to this number (139) is treated as a local call throughout the country.
Enjoy!