Derby Research Center

The Railway Technical Centre (RTC) in London Road, Derby, England, was built by the British Railways Board in the early 1960s to be its technical headquarters. British Rail was able to announce that "The Railway Technical Centre at Derby is the largest railway research complex in the world."

The RTC centralised most of the technical services provided by the regional Chief Mechanical & Electrical Engineers (CM&EE) to form the Department of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering (DM&EE). In addition, it housed the newly formed British Rail Research Division which reported directly to the Board. The latter is well known for its work on the experimental Advanced Passenger Train (APT-E). At that early stage this was a concept vehicle, and in time the DM&EE applied the new knowledge to existing practice in the design of the High Speed Train (HST), the later prototype APT-P and other high-speed vehicles.

Locomotives
Several locomotives were based out of RTC, for example: