DIY Automated Railway Crossing Gate: Safe, Reliable Train Detection System

Automatic Railway Gate Control System is a simple but very useful project, which will help to automatically open and close the railway gate upon detecting arrival or departure of the train.

In general, Railway gates are opened or closed manually by a gatekeeper. The information about the arrival of a train for opening or closing of the door is received from the nearby station. But some railway crossings are totally unmanned and many railway accidents occur at these unmanned level crossings.

To avoid the human intervention at level crossings completely, we need to automate the process of railway gate control. We all know how much it is difficult for the railway crossing workers’ to manually operate the railway gates, which commonly result in a difference in time for closings of the gate which increases the chances of accidents. The need for automated railway crossing was always there this system is fully automated .operate working on simple NPN transistor.

How does it work?

The system work on basic principles of LDR sensor as the train arrives between the led and LDR the resistance in LDR increase and due to voltage division the transistors receive the voltage at the base and then the transistors work as a closed switch for the motors which then close or open the gates. For a model purpose, we have used bo geared motor but in real use, Brushless DC electric motor can be used which can easily take the weight load of gate as it has more torque at lower rpm This project can be improved if we manage to get infrared sensor or using a microcontroller to control the motors. But due to budget constraints, we decided to stick with transistors circuit only

Components used

• Transistors -bc547 NPN transistor -4
• Sensor – LDR -2
• Led – 2 white for sensor and 3 yellow for street lamp
• 220-ohm resistor -2
• 47 k ohm -2
• 1k ohm -2
• In4148 Zener diode -2
• Bo geared motor -2
• Veroboard for circuit

Schematic Diagram: 

Learn How to make this Project 

Step 1: Collect all the components listed above and make the circuit as described Solder all the components carefully as the transistors are very fragile to heat

Step 2: Make an appropriate wood block to make the model as you like Colour and make all the connection to the circuit and you are ready to role.:)

Step 3: For the train model you can buy any train toy which is easily available.

Step 4: For  Making the street lamp take the drinking straws with flexible neck and mount the led on its one end.

Step 5: for making the sensor-  as in the circuit make the connection but place the led and LDR in front of each other such that whenever a train arrives in between them there should be dark on LDR.

Watch Video: 

This project is copyrighted to Sparsh Kishore  Kumar from India Dehradun, studying Engineering in Graphic Era University.