Pneumatic Based Automatic Railway Gate Control System
There are many railway crossings which are unmanned due to lack of manpower and unavailability of electricity needed to fulfill the demands. Hence, many accidents occur at such crossings, since there is no one to take care of the functioning of the railway gate when a train approaches the crossing. This paper describes the automatic railway gate control system using a pneumatic cylinder with sensor assistance for saving precious human lives and preventing major disasters in railway track. Here pneumatic power is used so that it can be efficient in the remote area also. This system can be divided into two parts. The first part is a concern on the hardware development where all electronic components have been included. Ultrasonic sensors are used to sense the rail and these sensors are controlled by the controller circuit. The microcontroller and the pneumatic compressor forms the main unit of the system. It receives an input signal from the sensors and sends information to the gate pneumatic actuator for opening and closing the gate. Besides, the input signal will also activate LCD display and alarm. The first ultrasonic sensor is fixed at a certain distance before the gate and the second sensor is fixed at the same distance after the gate. We call the sensor along the train direction as 'foreside sensor' and the other as 'after side sensor' When foreside sensor gets activated, the sensed signal is sent to the microcontroller and the gate is opened by the pneumatic actuator and the gate is closed and stays closed until the train crosses the gate and reaches after side sensors. This system is one of the efficient methods to avoid train accidents. The second part is based on software programming to operate the hardware structure. Program for railway gate control system is based on PIC microcontroller with PIC Basic Pro language.