How Partners Will Utilise GCRE
The Global Centre of Rail Excellence will be a unique piece of infrastructure in UK and European rail, supporting high quality research, testing and innovation.
Innovation teams from across the UK are already beginning to make use of the site as part of the £7.4m ‘Innovation in Railway Construction’ competition that is being delivered by Innovate UK and funded by the Department for Business and Trade in the UK Government. The competition invited teams to propose, deliver and demonstrate innovation in railway construction at the GCRE site.
In the first phase of the competition organisations were awarded funding for a feasibility study on their project. From those a group of teams have now been successful in securing funding to take their ideas to concept stage at the GCRE facility. Successful projects awarded funding include self-healing concrete, novel ground surveying techniques, new digital twin and drone technologies as well as next generation digital signalling. Take a look at the video below to see how teams are using the GCRE site.