Link interactions across stages of a customer’s journey to gain a better understanding of their experience
A messaging application that can be used to send targeted communications
Notify and support your customers about changes to their journey
Deliver insight from your vehicles to websites, apps, information screens, and more
The all-in-one app that connects colleagues through shared information
Flexibly Manage Stock, Crew, and other Resources
Monitor and alert against low adhesion events, resulting in wheel-slip and wheel-slide
A schematic view of real-time railway berth movements enhanced by GPS
Help your control and rostering teams make better on the day decisions, recovering to plan quicker
Live monitoring of your vehicle's health to predict and prevent faults
Consolidate your GPS feeds and know where your vehicles are at any time
Improve your service delivery with unified operational data in a modern data warehouse
Send and receive data to and from your vehicles in real time
Implement strategies to manage demand and maximise revenues
Last month, some of the Mistral Data team swapped London for Berlin to attend InnoTrans 2026. InnoTrans is the leading international trade fair for transport technology, which takes place every two years.
This year, it took place from the 22nd to the 25th of September. With over 3000 exhibitors across railway technology, railway infrastructure, public transport, and tunnel construction, the event drew over 175,000 visitors from 128 different countries.
It’s a huge event focused on innovation, challenges, and change across rail and transport. These are the key takeaways from the Mistral Data team (spoiler alert – they aren’t about AI).
Stewart Firth, Head of Product Strategy:
“My two key takeaways from InnoTrans are built on the power of people, and the power of data.”
“In some ways we didn’t need to go all the way to Berlin to have this reconfirmed, but reconfirmed it was on a massive scale! Many, many exhibitors were set up to discuss these types of challenges.
Thinking it through a bit further, very few railways are new-build, greenfield, blank slates – and generally even those that are end up interfacing with something a lot more ‘established’… and that means many already have data, systems, and processes embedded, contracted and in use, for better or worse… and can mean compromise around integration.
A lot of what we spoke to people about was how we can help them with what they already have; how we can help them unlock simpler ways of working; how we can enable better insights and how we can help with the inevitable integration.”
Lee Cocker, SME (Resourcing):
“The human connections, discussing problems, visions of possible futures, really interrogating and understanding issues from different perspectives….for this we probably didn’t need to go all the way to Berlin either. But where else other than Innotrans could you meet so many diverse stakeholders in one place in quick succession to compare notes, check understanding, and explore those perspectives in detail.”
My first InnoTrans was a bit overwhelming to begin with, and it probably took me the first day just to get my bearings.
I went expecting AI and robotics to dominate the conversation, but what struck me more was how many companies are looking at the UK rail market and trying to understand how to enter it. There was clearly interest, but also a perception that regulation and the complexity of the UK market can make that difficult.
“Another thing that stood out was the gap that can sometimes exist between what suppliers think the industry needs, and the problems customers are actually trying to solve.”
There are lots of good ideas and technology out there, but being able to really understand the operational problem and articulate that back clearly is just as important.
Overall, I loved the event. The networking was excellent, it was great to see so many familiar faces from the UK railway, and equally good to come across companies and ideas I’d never seen before.
And Berlin isn’t a bad place to spend a few days either!”
Our entire business has been built on a passion for all things rail (and solving problems for the people that keep it moving). InnoTrans proved what we’ve always believed to be true; that innovation in rail must be people-led.
If you want to hear more thoughts from the Mistral Data team, you can get more updates like this on our LinkedIn page. Follow us @Mistral Data