International Journal of Advance Science and Technology

Vol. 29, No. 10S, (2020), pp. 8296-8301

Automatic Railway Crossing Using Arduino

DhanushReddy KN1, Ganangalla Jeevan Kumar2, Darshan B3, Gopi Krishna R4,
Vinay NA5,
1,2,3,4,5
School of ECE, REVA University, Bangalore

Abstract
The Automatic Railway crossing using Arduino Project makes use of an Arduino UNO to manage the
whole circuit. Two DC motors are acquainted with open and shut the railway gates. The foremost
objective is to shut the railway gates when the train approaches it, so on block vehicles from going
across the track. Within the rapidly flourishing countries accidents within the unmanned level
crossings are increasing day by day. No fruitful steps are taken to the current point in these areas.
Our project deals with automatic railway gate control at intersection replacing the gates operated by
the gatekeepers. By employing the automated railway gate control at the amount crossing the arrival
of the train is detected by the sensors placed within the side of tracks. Hence the time that it's closed
could be a smaller amount compared to the operated by hand gates.

1. INTRODUCTION
The place where track and highway/road intersects one another at the identical level is assumed of as
“level crossing”. There are mainly two kinds of crossway they've manned crossroads and unmanned
crossroads. Railways being the foremost affordable mode of transportation are preferred over all the
other means. After we read the daily newspapers we stumble upon many railway accidents occurring
at unmanned railway crossings obstacle, not in fact system. This could be mainly due to the
carelessness in manual operations or lack of workers. During this paper, have come up with a solution
for the identical. Using simple electronic components had got tried to automate the control of railway
gates. As a train approaches the railway crossing from either side, the sensors placed in the track at a
particular distance from the gate detects the approaching train and accordingly controls the operation
of the gate. As a train approaches the railway crossing from either side, the sensors placed within the
track at a particular distance from the gate detects the approaching train and accordingly controls the
operation of the gate. When the wheels of the train moving over the track there'll be the creation of
vibration the sensor-1 senses the vibration and sends the signal to Arduino to indicate train arrival.
Modernization of Indian Railways has always been a matter focused on the development of the
essential infrastructure of India. Since the railways represent one of the most effective modes of
transport available to the people, it would be impossible to merely keep increasing the fares to satisfy
the prices incurred because of maintenance, the large workforce and thus the expansion activities. The
Railways should, therefore, consider upgrading itself to cutting-edge technologies for better efficiency
and value reduction. Improvising includes automating the railway gate operation and reduces the
man-power to the maximum extent. In general, crossroad gates are operated manually by a
gatekeeper. The review of train accidents of the last 10 years (2009-10 to 2018-19) that the data is on
the market indicates that an outsized number of accidents happen due to derailments & at a
crossroads. Survey says a whole of 2,547 railway crossing accidents led to 2,575 deaths and 126
injuries across the country within the year 2014. This motivated us to require this project. There are
different causes for railway tragedies but derailments and Carrefour accidents are more in terms of
analysis of accidents. The proportion of Carrefour accidents are more, this is often errors made by
gatekeepers and also errors done by unmanned level crossings. This could be avoided by
implementing automatic gate system at level crossings. The project explicitly deals with one amongst
the foremost common problem that's traffic jams besides a railway crossing. Since gates of railway
crossing are usually operated by hand, for most of the days, gates are kept closed for no reason, this
increasing road traffic. Moreover in our country accidents at railway crossings are gradually
increasing day by day and also the railway accidents are caused severe damaged to life and property.

ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST 8296

Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
 International Journal of Advance Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 10S, (2020), pp. 8296-8301

To solve the above problem, we have included an inspiration that may automatically controls the
railway gate at the junctions.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
The automatic railway gates operation has been projected using various methods. As proposed by
Xishi Wang (1992), the process of developing fault tolerance method has been applied for both the
hardware and the software components. Magnetic sensors placed underground to detect the train are
less affected by environmental changes and recognizes the direction of movement of vehicles. Jeong
Y (2008) defined the railway auto control system using OSGi and JESS. The state of railway cross
has been estimate during JESS in the technique. The issues in the technique are the insufficient inline
citations and also multiple issues related to OSGi. The different methods used by locomotive pilots
which can avoid the accidents and the safety measures while crossing the level crossings are also
discussed. Atul Kumar Dewangan (2012) gave a detailed introduction about the present railway
technology and also discussed the disadvantages of manually activated railway signals and the
railway warnings at the level cross. The train detectors act as the major component in the train
automation system. Banuchander J (2012) developed a method to concentrate on anti-collision
system to identify the collision points and to report these error cases to main control room, nearby
station as well as grid control stations. Efficient Zig-Bee based Train Anti-Collision using Zig-Bee
technology for railways is implemented.
Greene R.J. (2006) anticipated an intelligent railway crossing control system for multiple tracks that
features a controller which receives messages from incoming and outgoing trains by sensors. These
messages contain detail information including the direction and identity of a train. Depending on those
messages the controller device decides whenever the railroad crossing gate will close or open. But this
technique has the issue of high maintenance cost. Kawshik Shikder (2014) projected the automatic
operation of railway gates using RF technology. The major issue of this technique was every train
couldbe provided with RF technology. Thus it was economically feasible to implement.
Anil M.D.(2014) proposed advanced railway accident prevention system using sensor networks. He
used ZigBee RF module to communicate between base station and trains. But, ZigBee was a short
distance communicating device. Therefore it is practically not possible to implement his technique.

3. METHODOLOGY
We are concerened of providing an automatic railway gate control at unmanned level crossings .By
replacing the gates operated by gate keepers and also the semiautomatically operated gates.It deals
with two things;Firstly,it deals with the reduction of your time that the gate is being kept
closed.Secondly;to provide safety to the road uses by reducing the accidents that typically occurs
because of carelessness of road users and human error made by the gate keepers.By employing the
automated gate control at the level crossing, the arrival of train is detected by the sensor placed on
either side of the track.

Fig. 1: Block diagram

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Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
 International Journal of Advance Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 10S, (2020), pp. 8296-8301

Fig. 2: Pie-Chart of percentage of accident

4. IMPLIMENTATION
Algorithm
STEP 1:Start.
STEP 2:Set the variables.
STEP 3:Make initial settings of the signals for the train and road users.
STEP 4:Check for the arrival of the train in either direction by the sensors.If the train is sensed go to
STEP 5. Otherwise repeat STEP 4.
STEP 5:Make the warning signal for the road users and set the signal for the train.
STEP 6:Check for the presence of the obstacle using sensors. If there is no obstacle go to STEP 7.
Otherwise repeat STEP 6.
STEP 7:Close the gate and stop the buzzer warning.
STEP 8:Change the signal for the train.
STEP 9:Check for the train departure by the sensors. If the train sensed go to next STEP. Otherwise
repeat STEP 9.
STEP 10:Open the gate.
STEP 11:Go to STEP 3.
STEP 12:Stop
Circuit Diagram:-

Fig. 3: Circuit diagram of proposed work

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Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
 International Journal of Advance Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 10S, (2020), pp. 8296-8301

5. FLOW CHART

At the beginning the IRsensor1 senses for the detection of arriving train and the output of sensor1
goes HIGH, that is when the sensor1 senses the train. Then the buzzer and light will be turned ON for
the indication to the road users. And the gate will be closed by rotating the Servo motor. After the
sensor2 output goes HIGH, that is the sensor2 senses the departure of train the buzzer and LED will
be turned OFF and then the gate will open
6. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE DESCRIPTION:
Hardware:-
1.Arduino UNO-
2.IR Sensors-
3.L293d Motordriver-
4.DC Motor-
5.Toytrain
6.Buzzer and Traffic light
1. Arduino UNO

Fig.5: Arduino UNO Microcontroller

The Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega328. It has 14 digital input/output
pins (of which 6 can be used asPWM outputs), 6 analog inputs,a 16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB
connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. It contains everything needed to support
the microcontroller. Output of all the sensors are connected to A0, A1, A2 and A3 pins of Arduino.

ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST 8299

Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
 International Journal of Advance Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 10S, (2020), pp. 8296-8301

The pins D9 and D10 of the Arduino are PWM pins. These pins are connected to the Servo motor.
Servos are controlled by sending an electrical pulse of variable width, or pulse width modulation
(PWM), through the control wire.
IR pair is made with dual Op-amp IC LM358. Only one IC is required for a pair. A preset is used for
calibration.

2. IR Sensors

Fig.6: IR Sensors
The basic concept of an Infrared Sensor which is used as Obstacle detector is to transmit an infrared
signal, this infrared signal bounces from the surface of an object and the signal is received at the
infrared receiver.In the electromagnetic spectrum, the infrared portion is divided into three regions:
near infrared region(700nm to 1400nm), mid infrared region(1400nm to 3000nm)and far infrared
region(3000nm to 1mm).
3. Servo Motor
A servo motor is basically a DC motor along with some other special purpose components that make a
DC motor a servo. In a servo unit, you will find a small DC motor, a potentiometer, gear arrangement
and an intelligent circuitry.
4. Flow Chart
Software:-
1.Arduino Tool v1.8.4

Applications:
 The circuit is utilised in railways near railway gate.
 This is also utilised in car parking areas.
 This can be used in security areas like military ,residential areas and workspace.
 Lastly, no human resource is required.

7. RESULT AND ANALYSIS

As know that all single tracks are now Replaced by dual tracks because of heavy traffic by trains, it
has been done for both single tracks and also for dual tracks .This project is represented in the form of
pictures and it is attached below:

Fig. 7: Parallel; railway crossing

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Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
 International Journal of Advance Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 10S, (2020), pp. 8296-8301

IR sensors placed at a distance of 25cm on either side of the level crossing. The toy train passes the
first sensor and when it is detected by the sensor, a RED LED glows at the level cross indicating the
traffic that the gate is about to close and closes the gate with the help of servo motors. When the
second sensor senses the departure of the train the LED will turn off and the gates will open.

CONCLUSION

The automatic opening and closing of railway gates and signalling in the railway system using
Arduino is a new method and it is also a advanced method which will decrease the manpower in the
railway system. It can be implemented even in the rural area. We are using sound vibrator, so it is not
required much hardware components here. We can also reduce manual errors here. The accident rate
can be reduced here. For more populated countries like china, India, automation should be more
important. At last, can conclude that our project is more efficient, more reliable and it has a high-
performance rate.

REFERENCES:-

[1]. R.Gopinathan and B.Sivashankar, “PLC based railway level crossing gate control”, International
Journal of Emerging Technology in Computer Science & Electronics (IJETCSE). ISSN: 0976-1353
Volume 8 Issue 1 –April 2014.
[2]. Pradeep Raj, “Increasing accidents in the unmanned level crossing of the railways”, 2012.
[3]. Xishi Wang, Ning Bin, and Cheng Yinhang, “A new microprocessor based approach to an
automatic control system.” International Symposium on Industrial Electronics, pp. 842-843, 1992.
[4]. Jeong Y., Choon-Sung Nam, Hee-Jin Jeong, and Dong Shin, “Train Auto Control System based
on OSGI”, International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology, pp.276-279, 2008.
[5]. KSCSE, KSCSE library: “Railway track monitoring system”, project report.
[6]. Sangita N.Guja, Jagruti R.Panchal, Lalita K.Wani, “Improving safety with obstacle detection and
track following car using sensor, GPS and GSM”, International Journal of Research in Engineering
and Technology.
[7]. www.arduino.cc/reference [8]. Karthik, Krishnamurthi, Monica Bobby, Vidya V, “Sensor based
automatic control of railway gates”, International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer
Engineering & Technology.

ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST 8301

Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC