About Mind the Gates

Live closure forecasts for every active barrier crossing on the UK rail network that we can match to a train route — Great Britain from Network Rail's open timetable and movement feeds, Northern Ireland from Translink's published timetable.

Not a safety device. Always follow the signals, barriers, and instructions at the crossing itself. Predictions on this site can be wrong — signalling failures, gatekeeper-held manual gates, and barriers held down for road events (school crossings, road-works convoys) can all produce closures this site won't show, and the live timeline can briefly gap during site maintenance. Never rely on this site to decide whether it's safe to cross.

How it works

In Great Britain we combine Network Rail's published national timetable with their live train-movement feeds to work out when each crossing's barriers are likely to be down — and, where the railway's own signalling data covers a crossing, to observe closures as they actually happen and give warning of unscheduled trains. Forecasts update through the day as trains run early or late, get cancelled, or appear at short notice.

Northern Ireland works differently, because the data does. Translink publishes a timetable and live departure boards, but nothing equivalent to Network Rail's signalling feeds exists there — so those forecasts come from the timetable, adjusted when a train is reported running late, and no closure on an NI page is ever observed.

The barrier-down window around each train respects the crossing type — automatic, signaller-controlled, and miniature-warning-light crossings all behave differently — and live observation takes precedence over the timetable wherever we have it. How well it works is published, not claimed: see the daily accuracy report.

Data sources

Almost all open data, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0:

CIF SCHEDULE, TRUST, VSTP, TD, SMART and CORPUS — Network Rail Open Data feeds and reference sets (timetable, live movements, short-notice changes, signalling-area data, and location references).
BPLAN Geography — rail network reference (Open Rail Data wiki). Network Rail Open Data, augmented with a vendored community TIPLOC coordinate table (MIT-licensed, largely FOI-sourced).
NR active level crossings — register of every active crossing. Network Rail.
Translink NI Railways timetable — the working timetable for Northern Ireland, published by Translink on OpenDataNI under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Northern Ireland crossings are forecast from this alone: no signalling or train-movement data is published for the NI railway.
Translink Opendata API — live departure boards for Northern Ireland stations, used to adjust forecasts when a train is running late. Transport Information supplied by Translink Opendata API.
NI Level Crossing Orders — the statutory rules that authorise each Northern Ireland crossing and specify its protection, from legislation.gov.uk.
OpenStreetMap — crossing positions and track geometry in Northern Ireland. © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
OS National Grid transforms — Ordnance Survey.

Mind the Gates is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Network Rail, Translink / NI Railways, the Rail Delivery Group, or any train operator. "Network Rail", "Translink" and operator names are used here factually for attribution only.

Known limitations

Live observation doesn't reach every crossing — where it's missing, pages rely on the timetable-based forecast alone.
Northern Ireland crossings are forecast from the published timetable, adjusted when Translink's departure boards report a train running late. No signalling or train-movement data exists for the NI railway, so nothing observes those crossings: closure times are estimates by crossing type, a train no board has reported on yet runs to its timetable, and none of it can be scored for accuracy the way the Great Britain pages are.
Actual barrier timing varies from crossing to crossing; our windows are deliberately conservative rather than exact.
Unscheduled trains — engineering moves, ad-hoc freight — only show up shortly before they arrive: earlier than the barriers, but with far less notice than timetabled services.
After site maintenance the first few minutes err on the side of showing the schedule rather than flagging no-shows.
Footpath, user-worked, and open crossings have no railway-controlled closure to predict, so they aren't listed (user-worked crossings with miniature warning lights are — their lights are railway-controlled).
A small share of the national register can't be reliably matched to a train route and is hidden by default.

Common questions

How do I know if a level crossing is about to close?

Each crossing page shows a live status and a 30-minute forecast, built from the railway's own published timetable — and, in Great Britain, live train-movement feeds — so you can see the next predicted barrier-down before you set off.

What do the crossing types like AHB, MCB and CCTV mean?

AHB is an automatic half-barrier, MCB a manually-controlled barrier, and CCTV a manually-controlled barrier monitored by remote camera. The type sets how long the barriers are typically down before a train passes.

How accurate are the forecasts?

We measure it rather than guess: every day each crossing's page is scored against the train passes actually observed on the railway, and the results — how often a pass had advance warning, how often warnings came true, and the typical timing error — are published on the accuracy report. Forecasts can still be wrong, so always follow the signals and barriers at the crossing itself.

Which level crossings are covered?

Every active barrier crossing on the UK rail network that we can match to a train route — around 1,650 with railway-controlled closures or warning lights, across Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Browse them by region or search by name from the home page.

Spotted something off?

If a prediction doesn't match what you saw at the crossing, the "Is this right?" button on that crossing's page logs it with the exact time and place — or get in touch with the crossing, the time, and what actually happened.

Coverage

Newbury Today wrote about the project in July 2026. We appeared on BBC Radio Berkshire that month, and on Radio Kennet in August.

Thanks

Thank you to everyone who has helped in making this site. Anyone who has given feedback, made corrections, helped calibrate timings - I’m truly grateful for your efforts. Specifically I’d like to thank:

Various current and ex railway staff for their wisdom and help in giving me a better understanding of how the railways work.
The crossing keepers who work hard to keep everyone safe, allow the trains to run on time and keep the gates open whenever possible.