mcpbeat

Mind the Gates — UK level crossings MCP Server

uk.mindthegates/crossings
answering

Mind the Gates — UK level crossings is answering right now. Last checked 1 min ago. It exposes 4 tools.

Live barrier status and closure forecasts for ~1,600 UK level crossings. Public data, no auth.

Uptime history 39 hours of history
39 hours agonow
100.0%
Uptime 24h
92 of 92 checks
4
Tools
read from the server
167 ms
Response time
average over 24h
open, no key
Access
streamable-http

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 1 min ago.

run in your terminal
claude mcp add crossings --transport http https://mindthegates.uk/mcp
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crossings": {
      "url": "https://mindthegates.uk/mcp"
    }
  }
}
~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.crossings]
url = "https://mindthegates.uk/mcp"
.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crossings": {
      "url": "https://mindthegates.uk/mcp"
    }
  }
}
.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crossings": {
      "url": "https://mindthegates.uk/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 4

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

crossings
crossings_near
Nearest listed level crossings to a point, closest first. Returns one line per crossing — distance in MILES, then name, type, region and a status URL ending .md. Distance is straight-line (great circle) between the point and the crossing, NOT distance by road or along the railway: it answers 'which crossings are near this place', not 'which will this train reach next'.
list_crossings
Search UK level crossings by name, URL word or region name (substring, case-insensitive). Returns one line per match — name, crossing type, region, and a status URL ending .md that returns that crossing's live markdown status. Reports the total match count and returns the first `limit`; there is no pagination, so narrow the query to see different matches. Names starting with the query sort first.
busiest
busiest_today
The ten UK level crossings with the most predicted road-closed time today. Takes no arguments. Each line gives the rank, crossing name, predicted minutes closed across the whole day, and a status URL ending .md. The ranking is computed from today's timetable once per day, shortly after UK midnight, and the build timestamp is included in the reply — it is a whole-day total, not a live reading, so use crossing_status for what a barrier is doing now. Briefly unavailable right after a restart while the first build runs.
crossing
crossing_status
Live barrier status, the next-30-minute closure timeline and approaching trains for ONE crossing, as markdown. Forecasts are rebuilt per request from the live train feeds, so the answer changes minute to minute. Informational only — never a substitute for the signals and barriers at the crossing itself. An ambiguous name returns the candidate URL words to choose between; an unknown one asks you to call list_crossings first.

Endpoints

URLTransportStateLatencyChecked
https://mindthegates.uk/mcp streamable-http answering 160 ms 1 min ago

Mind the Gates — UK level crossings — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Mind the Gates — UK level crossings do?
It exposes 4 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: busiest_today, crossings_near, crossing_status, list_crossings. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →
Is Mind the Gates — UK level crossings working right now?
We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 92 of 92 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 167 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.
How do I connect Mind the Gates — UK level crossings?
Copy the ready config from this page — we generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each with the file path that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.
Does Mind the Gates — UK level crossings need an API key?
No. Mind the Gates — UK level crossings completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 4 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.
How fast is Mind the Gates — UK level crossings?
It answers our handshake in 167 ms on average, which is faster than 70% of all working MCP servers we measure. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.