Reserving an Indian Railways Ticket

For the past few days I've been trying to reserve an Indian Railways ticket for my train ride from Guwahati in Assam to Dimapur in Nagaland. I've tried using two credit / debit cards which have both worked when booking flights and buying stuff off the net.

So far, I have received a few copies of the following two error messages:

We deeply regret that this reservation (reference no.XXXXXXXXXX) requested by you did not materialize as the Communication Problem. Kindly retry the booking if you have not been able to complete your booking yet. We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. If the amount was Debited from your Account,We shall be making the refund back to your account shortly and it will start reflecting in your bank statement in 3 to 4 working days.

Yes, the Communication Problem.

And in typical Indian bureaucratic fashion, the message essentially blames the client for the fault, before suggesting that the transaction might have actually taken place:

We regret that the booking of your ticket could not be processed at this time as the transaction with ref. No. XXXXXXXXXX was not authorised by your bankers. The failure may also be due to some sort of inadequacies in your card / bank account.
You may kindly try using another valid card / account.
However, before proceeding further, we suggest that you kindly check from your 'Booked tickets' history if transaction has already been booked by you.

Sigh.