However, till India's independence in 1947, most of the designs and manufacture of railway equipment was entrusted to foreign consultants.

After independence, a new organisation called Railway Testing and Research Centre (RTRC) was set up in 1952 at Lucknow, for undertaking the intensive investigation of railway problems, providing basic criteria and new concepts for design purposes, for testing prototypes and generally assisting in finding solutions for specific problems.

In 1957, the Central Standards Office (CSO) and the Railway Testing and Research Centre (RTRC) were integrated into a single unit named Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) under the Ministry of Railways with its headquarters at Manak Nagar, Lucknow.

[1] The status of RDSO was changed from an "Attached Office" to a "Zonal Railway" on 1 January 2003, to give it greater flexibility and a boost to the research and development activities.

[14] Design and development of modern fault tolerant, fail-safe, maintainer friendly Electronic Interlocking system.

Field trials conducted for electric locomotive hauling Rajdhani/Shatabdi express trains with Head On Generation (HOG) system to provide clean and noise-free power supply to end on coaches.