Four companies have been announced as the recipients of Network Rail and Innovate UK's £300,000 grant for collaborative research and development.

Entrants were tasked with developing solutions relevant to rail that apply automated design to track layout, overhead line electrification, traction power supply systems, and signalling systems.

Costain, Graffica, PEAN Technologies and Plume Rail were announced as the winners of the competition, securing a share of the £300k fund.

The grant will be put towards projects that develop and demonstrate tools to automatically plan rail infrastructure.

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Atish Chauhan, project manager at Network Rail said: "I am really pleased that the challenge we set out in our competition generated a lot of interest and that companies have come back with some excellent ideas and solutions. Using automated design will help Network Rail with producing better designs faster and support our support long-term service planning by allowing better assumptions about future infrastructure and associated changes to services."

Kelvin Davies, innovation lead for rail at Innovate UK, added: "The collaboration between Innovate UK and Network Rail has seen the delivery of a very successful competition with a high level of interest, bringing together a range of organisations with different skills and specialisms. We look forward to working with Network Rail to deliver the exciting portfolio of projects over the coming 12 months and to help demonstrate the capability of automated design for planning different aspects of future railway systems."

Network Rail and Innovate UK will continue to work closely with the competition winners to give them the opportunity to develop and demonstrate their automated design tools.

(CM/JG)