Rail Live 2025

For those who’ve spent any length of time in the rail industry, there’s a unique energy that accompanies the Rail Live event each year. Held at the Long Marston Rail Innovation Centre in Warwickshire, Rail Live is not your typical industry conference. It’s not confined to a sterile hall of booths or locked into a rigid speaking schedule. Instead, it sprawls across a live rail environment, bringing machinery, technology, operators, and policymakers into direct contact with the physical realities of railway infrastructure. Over the past several years, Rail Live has quietly but profoundly shaped the direction of the UK rail sector.

In its early days, Rail Live was a relatively modest event—a chance for suppliers and engineers to demonstrate products in the field, and for rail professionals to network outdoors. However, as the rail industry entered a period of profound transformation—digitalisation, decarbonization, and post-COVID recovery—Rail Live evolved into something much more. Today, it is the UK's largest outdoor rail exhibition, drawing thousands of professionals from every corner of the sector.

The numbers alone are impressive. More than 7,000 attendees and nearly 300 exhibitors convene over two days. But it’s not the scale that sets Rail Live apart. It’s the format. Unlike traditional expos, Rail Live is a place where rolling stock runs on actual track, where you can see plant equipment in action, and where technologies are demonstrated in the kind of conditions they’re designed for. The result is an immersive, hands-on experience that shortens the gap between innovation and adoption.

This immediacy has proven especially valuable in a sector that often struggles with inertia. The rail industry is heavily regulated, capital-intensive, and built on legacy systems. Change comes slowly. Rail Live, however, accelerates that change. It puts new technologies in front of decision-makers not as abstract proposals or glossy presentations, but as working systems they can see, hear, and touch. This makes all the difference.

Take sustainability, for example. The UK government has committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and the rail industry has a crucial role to play in that journey. At Rail Live, sustainability isn’t a sideshow—it’s front and centre. From hydrogen-powered passenger trains to innovations in electrification and eco-friendly infrastructure, the event showcases the tools we need to decarbonise. These aren’t just concepts—they’re operational prototypes, and in some cases, already-in-service technologies. The visibility and credibility these technologies gain from Rail Live have helped shift the conversation from whether sustainable rail is possible to how quickly it can be scaled.

Safety is another area where Rail Live is leaving its mark. The event has become a focal point for Rail Safety Week, with demonstrations, talks, and workshops highlighting advances in safety technology, workforce protection, and operational standards. In an industry where a single failure can have devastating consequences, these conversations—and the innovations that support them—are essential. It’s not just about showing what’s new; it’s about reinforcing a safety-first culture across the sector.

Perhaps most importantly, Rail Live brings together an unusually broad cross-section of the industry. Engineers, fleet managers, infrastructure specialists, digital startups, policy makers, and frontline staff all walk the same trackbed during the event. There’s an egalitarian spirit here—something rare in a sector often split into silos. Rail Live flattens hierarchies. You can find a junior engineer and a director of a major TOC (Train Operating Company) looking at the same trackside sensor, asking questions of the same supplier. These moments of shared curiosity build understanding across roles and companies. They foster relationships that translate into real-world projects and procurement decisions.

That brings us to another important point: Rail Live isn’t just a showcase—it’s a market. Contracts are discussed. Deals are struck. And perhaps more importantly, procurement pathways are clarified. For smaller suppliers and SMEs, the event provides direct access to Tier-1 contractors and operators—access that might otherwise take months of formal engagements and unanswered emails. It levels the playing field and introduces agility into a procurement process that often feels bogged down by bureaucracy.

Rail Live has also become a barometer of industry mood. After the pandemic, there was an urgent need to reset. Attendance surged as professionals sought to reconnect, re-evaluate, and reimagine the future of UK rail. That future is now taking shape in the form of digital signalling projects, rolling stock upgrades, freight transformation strategies, and workforce innovation. Much of that momentum can be traced back to the conversations, contacts, and confidence sparked at Rail Live.

The 2025 edition, scheduled for June, is shaping up to be the most ambitious yet. It will feature returning stars like the HydroFLEX hydrogen train and Stadler’s tri-mode locomotives, as well as new developments in AI-led maintenance systems and data-driven asset management. Alongside these exhibits will be a packed programme of talks and panels, touching on everything from CP7 planning to the future of the UK’s freight network.

More than an industry event, Rail Live has become a moment. A pause in the year to assess how far we’ve come—and to see what’s next. It’s where strategy meets steel, where ambition meets application. And for an industry often seen as slow-moving, Rail Live offers a rare jolt of acceleration.

If you’ve never attended, it’s worth the trip—not just to see what the industry is doing, but to feel the energy of a sector in motion. And if you’ve been before, you’ll know: no two years are the same. Because the industry isn’t the same. It’s learning. Adapting. Progressing.

And Rail Live is helping lead the way.

https://raillive.org.uk/