AN AUTOMATED RAILWAY STATION TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM

Majority of accidents experienced with railway transportation involve collision with automobiles or other vehicles and collision with other trains. These collisions can be averted by putting safety measures in place. Part of the measures can be achieved by using computerized railway station traffic control systems that use microcontrollers and electromechanical devices to shift traffic from one rail lane to another and also to operate the level crossing gate. The two major stages of the system being described here are thus the track switching stage and the level crossing gate stage.  The system makes use of microcontrollers for decision making. The microcontrollers are programmed to detect signals from sensors and to output the processed signals to control electromagnetic devices through motor drivers. The codes for the microcontrollers were written in PIC Basic programming language and were debugged and compiled using Micro Code Studio Integrated Development Environment. The resultant Hex files were programmed into the memory of the microcontrollers with the aid of a universal programmer. Software simulation was carried out using the Proteus virtual system modeling software. A scaled down prototype of the system was built and tested. The prototype was able to execute all the decisions required to control the given railway station. A practical real life system would require the scaling up of the power required to drive the various motors; the logic of the system would however remain unchanged. The inclusion of the automated traffic control lighting system at the level crossing gate in the system eliminates the fatigue and tedium associated with a manually controlled traffic system. The computerized railway station traffic control system which helps in track switching and level crossing gate traffic control is capable of improving reliability, speed, operational safety and efficiency of the railway transportation system.

Food Consumption Pattern in Ogbomoso Metropolis of Oyo State, Nigeria

The study shed light on food consumption pattern in Ogbomoso Metropolis using Almost Ideal Demand System. Information on different classes of food consumed by the household was obtained using a multistage random technique. The result showed that demand for root and tubers and vegetables are elastic than demands for the other classes of food considered in this study. Also, legume has the most inelastic own-price elasticity among other food items considered in the study. This indicates that households in Ogbomoso metropolis are insensitive to changes in the price of legumes. Expenditure elasticities of all the food items were examined and were found to be less than one. All the food items are expenditure inelastic with root and tubers and fruits having the highest expenditure followed by animal protein, cereals, legumes and vegetables respectively. This implies that despite being staple foods, the consumption of each of these will decline as per capita income increases, this finding is counter intuitive. The highest expenditure elasticity is found for the fruits, suggesting that its demand will grow faster than the demand for the other products as the economy develops and income increases