Abstract: Indian Railways has one of the largest railway networks in the world, criss-crossing over 1,15,000 kilometers in distance, all over India. However, with regard to reliability and passenger safety Indian Railways is not up to global standards. Among other factors, cracks developed on the rails due to absence of timely detection and the associated maintenance pose serious questions on the security of operation of rail transport. A recent study revealed that over 25% of the track length is in need of replacement due to the development of cracks on it. Manual detection of tracks is cumbersome and not fully effective owing to much time consumption and requirement of skilled technicians. This project work is aimed towards addressing the issue by developing an automatic railway track crack detection system. This proposed system identifies the cracks and obstacles on the track using sensors and is also capable of alerting the authorities in the form of SMS messages along with location by using GPS and GSM modules.

Keywords: Railway track, arduino microcontroller, GSM module, GPS module, IR sensor.

| DOI: 10.17148/IJIREEICE.2021.9611