Editor’s Review: InnoTrans 2024

Our InnoTrans experience began on 23 September 2024, when the Global Railway Review (GRR) editorial team attended the exclusive InnoTrans press day at the Messe Berlin exhibition centre. The event commenced with keynote speeches from industry experts, including Sarah Stark, CEO of VDB; Enno Wiebe, General Director of UNIFE; Martin Schmitz, CEO Technology, VDV; Azar Mottale, Head of Mobility at ZVEI; and Dr. Heike van Hoorn, CEO of DVF, who addressed all the attendees, highlighting the unique opportunity the conference presents as a networking and innovation platform for the global rail industry.

Our editor, Elizabeth Jordan, then caught up with Enno Wiebe about his first 100 days as Director General at UNIFE and what he hopes to see at InnoTrans this year. You will soon find this interview on our exclusive Global Railway Review InnoTrans blog.

On the first official day of the exhibition, Elizabeth began the day by meeting with the Australian Rail Association and the African Rail Industry Association to hear about the exciting upcoming projects in their regions.

She also experienced the VR headset displays at Saint Gobain and Europe for Rail’s stands, testing the technology used for maintenance and enforcing client understanding of the latest technologies. 

Our Head of Content at Russell Publishing, Ian Betteridge, spoke to Deep Desai, MD for Sensonic India, and Executive Director for Business Development at the company. Deep talked about how the company uses sensors which collect vibration data from fibre optic cabling trackside to detect track trespass, prevent cable theft, warn of landslides or rockfalls and even intruders on the track. Each unit effectively turns up to 100km of cable into thousands of sensors distributed along the track, spaced around 6.5m apart. The system is also capable of locating catenary faults and monitoring track condition.

Elizabeth then attended the launch of the UNIFE World Rail Market Study at their impressive and undeniably green stand. This annual market report is a trusted source of information and reliable forecast for the industry in the future and this edition is the 10th of its kind. This exclusive market study and forecast was produced in collaboration between UNIFE and Bain & Company. Introduced by UNIFE’s Director General, Enno Wiebe, the market report shows a promising market growth of 3%.

Wednesday began with a motivational visit to the Europe for Rail stand where Elizabeth caught up with the Director of Permanent Secretariat of Transport Community Treaty, Matej Zakonjsec and Giorgio Travaini, Executive Director at Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking. They discussed the projects taking place in Europe, both currently and in the near future, and explained how they hope the rail industry in Europe will deal with upcoming challenges.

Next, surrounded by the beautiful vintage architecture of the Palais conference hall, Elizabeth spoke to Azar Mottale, Director of the Mobility Division at ZVEI about her involvement with InnoTrans and how, as association of the electrical and digital industry ZVEI is supporting the rail industry in its digital evolution.

Meanwhile, Ian met Guillaume Vendroux, DELMIA CEO at Dassault Systèmes, to talk about the pressing challenges in the rail industry, the impact of digitalisation, and the concept of “future mobility”. He also touched on one of the biggest challenges in rail – and something that was a hot topic at Innotrans – the struggle to recruit to fill the “skills gap”. Here, again, technology could help. As he put it, “One critical step is the integration of immersive technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality for workforce training. These tools not only provide workers with the opportunity to train in safe, controlled environments, but they also enable continuous learning, helping workers stay up-to-date with the latest technologies.”

Elizabeth made sure to attend some of the illuminating talks and presentations that were held at the Atkins Realis stand, where she found Bonnie Price, CEO of Young Rail Professionals, giving a fantastic presentation on what YRP have achieved in recent years and their targets for the future, starting with 2025.

To round off the second day, Elizabeth visited the Birmingham University stand and spoke to Mani Entezami, Research Fellow and CTO of MoniRail Ltd, who spoke about how his work with the university inspired the founding of MoniRail to help solve track maintenance issues faced by infrastructure operators.

Our team’s final day at InnoTrans 2024 was no less exciting! Ian and our media team headed to the stand of Cummins to meet Michael Himmen, managing director for hydrogenics, and Andreas Dammann, Business Manager Rail – EMEA and talk through their latest technologies, both hydrogen and diesel. The team talked through the advantages of hydrogen for specific rail applications, as well as the continuing use and increased efficiency of diesel.

Simultaneously, Elizabeth explored SwissRail’s impressive alpine inspired treble-floored booth and caught up with their Managing Director/ CEO, Andreas Haas. Sitting in the official SwissRail top slope restaurant, he explained how important it is that rail continues to push itself out of its heritage comfort zone to find more efficient and sustainable solutions to challenges and attract the next generation of talent into the industry. 

Next, Elizabeth went to meet the Rail Baltica team at their stand, being shown around the latest infrastructure advances in the project and speaking to them about their hopes for the next few years, including the next stages of the project’s development and the opportunities to go and see the work taking place for ourselves.

The team rounded up their trip with a visit to Nokia’s strikingly colourful stand, where they were given a full tour and got the chance to talk about the latest digital and data options for rail with Benoit Leridon, Nokia Mobility’s Transportation Lead. 

As a first-time experience for a few members of the team, InnoTrans 2024 was a fantastic way to completely immerse in the global rail industry, catch-up with familiar faces and make new connections as well as learn about the latest technologies and projects being launched around the world. Elizabeth summed up her experience and hopes for the future in an interview you can find on our blog.