Richard Gostling was born in 1944 and studied at the University of Cambridge. In 1967 he became a British Rail Graduate Engineer at Swindon. He worked in the British Rail Research Department at Derby from 1969 to 1996. He joined AEA Technology as the Director in 1996, serving in this capacity until 2002 when he became the Technical Director for the Railway Industries Association, a position that he left in 2009.