Railway passengers will now be able to see the status of seats while booking on the lines of airline passengers.

The Indian Railways on Wednesday announced the introduction of the user-friendly feature, which will give a display of train coaches and berth-wise accommodation status on the IRCTC website.

The feature will display the seating layout in different colours to highlight the seats that have been booked, are vacant and partially booked.

The coach layout of nine classes and more than 120 different coach layouts have been incorporated in the feature, which will also display class-wise and coach-wise fully vacant berth availability information as per the First Chart of the train. The First Chart is prepared four hours before the train departure.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said reservation charts will now be available for public viewing on the internet.

Passengers can use the information for onboard booking of the vacant berths. This feature is available on the web as well as in the mobile version.