Moving 40 people by train: group bookings and FTR coaches

You've got 40 people to move by train, a school batch, a pilgrimage group, a wedding party, and you open IRCTC to book the way you always do. Six passengers per PNR. No group booking button anywhere on the screen. Forty people means seven-plus separate transactions, and no single confirmation you can hand the client.

That gap between what an IRCTC group booking search implies and what the website actually offers is where operators lose a weekend to confusion, or worse, find out three days before departure that half the group is still waitlisted. There are exactly two legal ways to move a large group by train in India, and neither one lives on the consumer booking app.

This post covers both routes, the PRS counter and FTR (Full Tariff Rate), what each costs, where each breaks, and what to do when your group is too small or cash flow too tight for either to make sense.

Why IRCTC's online booking cannot move a group of 40

IRCTC's e-ticketing system caps a standard PNR at 6 passengers, and only 4 under Tatkal. There is no bulk or group-booking option built into the ordinary booking flow at all: IRCTC's own official e-ticket booking guide walks through the individual-passenger process end to end and contains nothing for groups or charters. Confirm the current per-PNR cap on the live booking screen before you quote a client, since these limits have moved before.

Part of the reason bulk itineraries can't even be assembled around the cap is a session restriction: IRCTC's platform allows one booking per login session, with a narrow exception for a same-day return or onward journey booked between 8 am and 12 pm. You cannot log in once and stack ten PNRs back to back to piece together a 40-pax group. That's why the counter and FTR routes exist as separate channels.

Route one: booking a group at the PRS counter

A group of roughly 15 to 50 passengers can be cleared as one bulk PNR at a physical PRS (Passenger Reservation System) counter, where a Station Master or Chief Reservation Supervisor has discretion to process the booking against a passenger list and ID proof. This is a manual counter process, not something available through the website or app, and how smoothly it goes depends on the specific station and officer as much as the rules.

In practice, that means:

1. Prepare a full passenger list with names, ages, gender and a valid ID proof (Aadhaar, passport, or any government photo ID) for every traveller, exactly as you would for individual bookings.
2. Approach the PRS counter at a major station, ideally the one closest to your registered office or a station where you have an existing relationship, well ahead of your intended travel date. Multi-day advance notice is standard practice; walking in a day or two out rarely works for a group this size.
3. Request a group or bulk booking specifically. Counter staff will process it as one PNR (or occasionally split across two linked PNRs if the group is large), drawn from the same quota pool as regular bookings, not a dedicated group quota.
4. Carry a covering letter on your agency letterhead if the group represents a school, company or religious trust; many counters ask for one even when it isn't strictly mandated.

Because this booking draws from ordinary quota, availability is not guaranteed. A group PNR raised against a train that's already filling up can go partly or fully waitlisted, which brings up the trap that actually sinks departures.

The rule that will ruin a departure: waitlisted-in-group boarding

If any passenger on a group PNR is still on the waitlist when the chart is prepared, that passenger cannot board, full stop, even though every other name on the same PNR is confirmed and travelling. This is the standard Indian Railways PNR rule, not a group-booking-specific clause, but it hits a large single group PNR harder simply because there are more names for the waitlist to catch.

For a 40-pax departure, that means one WL berth left over at chart preparation is not a rounding error. It's one traveller who cannot board the train your group is on, standing on the platform while the other 39 leave, unless you've arranged a backup seat on the same train, a later train, or road transport to the first overnight stop.

Careful: Book a group PNR against a train that's already showing partial availability and you're gambling on chart-day luck for every last confirmed berth. Book well in advance, against a train with genuine spare capacity, or don't rely on the counter route for a group this size at all.

Route two: FTR, chartering a coach or a full train

FTR (Full Tariff Rate) lets an operator charter one or more coaches, or an entire train, ahead of the journey, run through a dedicated portal, ftr.irctc.co.in, separate from the standard e-ticketing site. Registering here puts you outside the passenger-quota system entirely: you're contracting capacity directly with the railway.

The process, as reported by the portal and its published terms:

1. Register your organisation on ftr.irctc.co.in and raise a request specifying route, date, and how many coaches (or a full train) you need.
2. The railway assesses availability and quotes back a tariff. Partial bookings commonly run up to around 10 coaches; a full-train configuration is reported to run to roughly 24 coaches, including 2 mandatory SLR (luggage-cum-brake) coaches.
3. Pay the registration deposit to lock the request in. Under FTR's own published terms, payment must be received within 6 days of raising the request, counting the day raised as day one; miss it and the request lapses. The same 6-day rule is also indexed on Indian Railways' own passenger-enquiry site, confirming FTR is a railway-administered scheme, not a third-party product.
4. Settle the balance and final passenger manifest ahead of departure.

FTR bookings are reported to be workable roughly 6 months ahead of travel and typically need to be raised no later than about 30 days before the journey. Indian Railways also restricts FTR bookings during major holiday seasons such as Holi, Diwali and Chhath Puja, so build that blackout into your calendar before promising a client a charter over a festival window. Treat every figure in this paragraph as reported and date-stamped to August 2026; confirm current coach counts, booking windows and blackout dates on the live portal before quoting.

What FTR actually costs against your package price

As of August 2026, FTR's registration deposit is commonly reported at roughly ₹50,000 per coach for a partial booking, held for up to about 7 days, with a full-train charter needing a minimum deposit in the region of ₹9 lakh. These figures could not be independently verified this session and should be confirmed directly on ftr.irctc.co.in before you quote a client against them.

The deeper cost logic, whatever the exact current deposit turns out to be: "Full Tariff Rate" means exactly what it says. You're charged the full fare for every berth in the chartered coach or train, whether or not you fill it. A half-empty chartered coach costs the same as a full one.

Example: Say you're moving 45 pax on a pilgrimage departure and it works out to two sleeper coaches under partial FTR. At a commonly reported ₹50,000-per-coach deposit, that's ₹1,00,000 you need in hand before the request even clears, against a 6-day payment window. Spread across 45 confirmed pax, that deposit alone works out to roughly ₹2,200 per head. If only 30 people confirm by the time you have to commit, the same ₹1,00,000 becomes a ₹3,333-per-head exposure, sitting against a group that hasn't paid you in full yet.

That's the arithmetic that decides whether FTR helps your margin or wrecks it: fixed charter cost divided by however many pax actually show up and pay, the same break-even logic that governs any fixed departure.

Decision rule: which route fits which group size

None of the bands below are official railway thresholds; they're working judgment calls on how the paperwork and cost scale.

Group size	Route	Why
Under ~15	Split across multiple trains, individual quota	Too small to justify counter or FTR paperwork; book in batches of up to 6 per PNR
~15-50	PRS counter, bulk group PNR	One counter-cleared PNR, but carries chart-day waitlist risk on every seat
~50-150 (roughly 2-6 coaches)	Partial FTR	Guarantees capacity; deposit and 6-day payment window only pencil out once counter WL risk is unacceptable
Full train (500+, 20+ coaches)	Full-train FTR	Pilgrimage circuits, mega-events, large corporate charters where a single train is genuinely the product

When neither route works: the fallback plan

Below the size where either route makes sense, or when cash flow can't absorb a large deposit on a tight payment deadline, split the group across multiple trains booked under normal individual quota, in batches of up to 6 per PNR, and coordinate arrival so the sub-groups reunite at a common meeting point. It's more booking overhead, but it removes both the FTR deposit risk and the single-PNR waitlist trap.

The other fallback is converting the rail leg to road or air and re-costing the package around it. Group air comes with its own staged-payment structure and deposit deadlines to calendar the same way as FTR's; switching modes changes which supplier's clock you're watching, not whether one exists. For school or college groups, where budgets are tighter and parent committees ask more questions about mode of travel, that recosting is worth doing early, alongside the rest of the contract terms you'd want locked before departure.

Worth checking before any of this: pushing client bookings through a personal IRCTC agent ID, group or otherwise, runs into its own legal problem separate from the group-size question.

Common questions

How to book entire train for group tour

Register the request on ftr.irctc.co.in under the Full Tariff Rate scheme, specifying route, date and that you want a full-train configuration (reported to run to roughly 24 coaches including 2 mandatory SLR coaches). Pay the registration deposit within the 6-day window to lock it in. This is not available anywhere on the standard IRCTC booking site or app.

FTR booking charges per coach

The registration deposit is commonly reported at around ₹50,000 per coach, held for up to about 7 days, though this figure could not be independently verified this session and should be confirmed on the live portal before quoting. Beyond the deposit, you're billed the full tariff for every berth, filled or not, which is the cost driver that actually decides your per-pax margin.

Group booking irctc kaise kare

IRCTC's website has no group-booking option; a bulk booking for roughly 15-50 people is done in person at a PRS counter, against a passenger list and ID proof, with a Station Master clearing it as one PNR. For larger or capacity-guaranteed moves, the alternative is FTR at ftr.irctc.co.in, chartering coaches or a full train directly from the railway instead of booking through passenger quota.

The short version

• IRCTC's online booking caps a PNR at 6 passengers (4 on Tatkal) and has no group-booking option at all; every route for moving 40+ people runs outside the standard app.
• Route one is a PRS counter bulk booking, commonly cleared up to around 50 passengers by the Station Master, against ID proof and advance notice.
• The trap on the counter route: any passenger still waitlisted at chart preparation cannot board, even if the rest of the group PNR is confirmed.
• Route two is FTR at ftr.irctc.co.in, chartering coaches or a full train at full tariff, with a registration deposit due within 6 days of raising the request.
• FTR bills full tariff for every berth whether it's filled or not, so divide the fixed charter cost by your confirmed headcount before you commit, the same break-even math as any fixed departure.
• Below the size where counter booking or FTR pencils out, split the group across multiple trains under individual quota, or re-cost the leg onto road or air.
• Treat every figure above (deposit amounts, coach counts, booking windows) as reported and date-stamped to August 2026; confirm current terms on ftr.irctc.co.in before you quote a client.