Inside a Railway Research Lab! We go behind the scenes at the University of Southampton

Britain has a proud history of advanced railway research. It was British Rail who conceived the hugely successful High Speed Train. The BR Research Centre then came up with the brilliant tilting train design of the Advanced Passenger Train until it was scrapped, only for it to reappear years later, when it was sold back to us by a French Italian consortium in the form of the Pendolino.

The Railway Technical Centre in Derby was a global centre of excellence. And then at privatisation, we rather lost the plot. The research arm of BR was sold, and research and development became fractured.

Fortunately though, the story did not end there and Green Signals recently had an exclusive behind the scenes visit to the University of Southampton where Professor William Powrie CBE and his colleagues are undertaking some amazing research that is not only improving our knowledge, but helping to save hundreds of millions of pounds as well.