Leading Edge Developments in Railway Technology - Birmingham University

The IRSE's technical event on railway signalling, telecommunications, train control and operations, hosted at the University of Birmingham's Edgbaston campus across one and a half days from 18 November.

The headline session comes from the team in China behind Virtual Coupling Technology and Its Application in Urban Rail Transit, which won the 2026 IRSE Global Industry Award for Innovation of the Year: trains running as coordinated formations without physical couplers, using train-to-train communication, cooperative control and intelligent dispatching. Other presentations come from the UK and China, including work applying quantum techniques. The event also runs in York with a partly different programme. Tickets 65 pounds.

Why go: Birmingham hosts the UK's main rail research centre, and this is award-winning work presented by the people who built it. Best for signalling and control engineers, and rail technology suppliers.