Rolling Stock Days · 2027

Agoris analysis · updated October 2026

Key takeaways

• Rolling Stock Days is a new European business convention devoted to railway rolling stock: locomotives, passenger trains, maintenance, on-board equipment and digital solutions. The official website presents it as the European event dedicated to rolling stock.
• First edition, Tuesday 19 and Wednesday 20 January 2027, at the Palais de la Musique et des Congrès in Strasbourg, place de Bordeaux.
• Format: pre-scheduled business meetings between suppliers and buyers, conferences and themed workshops, and an exhibition. Meetings and conferences share the same time slots on both days.
• Organisers: the AERRL, the European association of railway rolling stock lessors, and abe (advanced business events), with the support of the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA).
• Frequency not announced at this stage: the 2027 edition is the first, and no later date has been published.
• The home page displays more than 50 exhibitors, more than 500 participants, more than 10 countries represented and more than 40 speakers. For a first edition, these are figures announced before the event, not a final tally.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

The website details seven exhibitor profiles: manufacturers, equipment suppliers, maintenance, refurbishment and modernisation of existing equipment, digital solutions, data and connected objects, and on-board technologies. Their stated aim: to meet new customers in Europe, present products and innovations to qualified buyers, and understand the current needs of the railway market.

What sets the event apart is its institutional organiser. The AERRL brings together rolling stock lessors, that is, companies that own locomotives and passenger trains and make them available to railway operators. The event's website conveys the weight of this buyer base with key figures for the lessors, displayed without detailed sources or scope: €800 million a year in new locomotives, €600 million in maintenance and €1 billion in passenger trains. According to the same figures, more than 40% of new locomotives in Europe are bought by leasing companies, one delivery in two will go to them between 2025 and 2027, and one electric locomotive in four in Europe is expected to belong to them by 2030.

For a supplier, the stated argument is to meet qualified buyers: among the buyer profiles cited by the website, leasing companies come first.

Notable exhibitors

No exhibitor list was published at the time of writing. The meetings programme relies on a catalogue of participants, available after online registration, whose operation is described on the B2B Meetings page of the official website.

Apart from the organisers, the only companies whose logos appear on the website are the members of the AERRL, on the page devoted to the association: ten lessors, full members (Akiem, Beacon, Cargounit, European Locomotive Leasing Group, Nexrail.lease, Northrail, OnTrain, Railpool, Renfe Alquiler and RSLease), and Wyss&Lila, an associate member, a Swiss engineering and maintenance company which, according to the AERRL, is not a leasing company. The lessors tend to be on the buyers' side: the individual presence of these companies in Strasbourg has not been announced.

Quality of the audience

On the buyer side, the website targets five profiles: leasing companies, railway operators, manufacturers, asset managers and institutions. Manufacturers therefore appear both among the exhibitor profiles and among the buyer profiles. The event page on abe's website specifies the functions targeted: supply chain, purchasing, engineering, manufacturing and R&D on the visitor side, and sales, marketing, business development and technical promotion on the exhibitor side.

The conferences are aimed more broadly at technical experts, manufacturers, lessors, operators and institutions. As this is a first edition, no attendance data exists and no audit has been announced.

Events & community

Conference programme

The published programme is organised in five sessions over two days. The common thread is explicit: the AERRL presents its positions in four of the five sessions, often alongside those of the ERA or feedback from industry players.

Tuesday 19 January opens with maintenance: the development of the rolling stock maintenance market, the efficiency of the entities in charge of maintenance (ECM) through standardisation and digital tools, based on the ERA's new ECM guide, followed by obsolescence and spare parts management, including 3D spare parts. The afternoon moves on to ERTMS with ETCS and FRMCS: a single ETCS baseline for Europe, a pragmatic FRMCS roll-out, and the process for improving ESC tests after the 2024 and 2026 ERTMS conferences. A third session deals with financing: European support for rail (State aid, European Investment Bank guarantees, innovation subsidy schemes), digital automatic coupling (DAC), and decarbonisation by switching from diesel to HVO, batteries or hydrogen. The day ends with a cocktail reception.

Wednesday 20 January focuses on economic efficiency: the revival of rail freight, with the EU Cargo Alliance as the framework for discussion; the role of leasing for public and private passenger operators, including the modernisation of existing fleets; and energy measurement and purchasing, based on an ERA study report and the Eress experience. The afternoon is devoted to data and security: digital technology, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, with UNIFE's vision on AI, followed by a review of ten years of work by the Joint Network Secretariat (JNS). The AERRL gives the closing address.

No speaker is named at the time of writing. This is the programme announced by the organiser, and it may change before January.

Business meetings

This is the heart of the format. The process follows five steps: online registration, consulting the participant catalogue, selecting the meetings you want, receiving a personalised agenda, and meetings on site. Each meeting is an individual one-to-one slot, built around the participant's agenda: the organiser stresses the difference from open networking. Meetings take up the same time slots as the conferences, from 9.30am to 7pm on Tuesday and from 9.30am to 5.30pm on Wednesday, with a lunch break from 12.30pm to 2pm.

This model is abe's trademark, applied to its business conventions in aeronautics, automotive, chemicals and energy: its teams recruit the suppliers and buyers being sought, then build the meeting schedules over the duration of the event.

Community & networks

The AERRL is an international non-profit association under Belgian law, based in Brussels. Its full members are lessors of locomotives and passenger trains with an office and most of their activity in the European Union, and it has one associate member that is not a lessor. It states that it represents more than half of the leased rolling stock fleet in service in the European Union, Switzerland and Norway. Its recent positions, such as its Manifesto 2024-29 presented on 21 January 2025 or its call to review the ERTMS roll-out strategy in favour of a single ETCS and FRMCS, feature directly in the programme.

abe (advanced business events), based in Boulogne-Billancourt, organises business conventions, conferences and professional congresses. It states 120,000 clients since 1984 and 1,000 events organised. In the railway sector, abe also announces Rail Industry Summit Morocco, in El Jadida, on 13 and 14 April 2027.

The choice of Strasbourg is argued by the website: a central position in Europe, home of the European Parliament, and a location on the border between the French and German railway markets.

The website mentions no media partner at the time of writing. The event has a dedicated LinkedIn page.

On site: what you need to know

The convention takes place at the Palais de la Musique et des Congrès, which the event's website refers to as the Palais des Congrès, place de Bordeaux.

The hour-by-hour programme is published day by day. Tuesday 19 January: welcome at 9am, conferences and meetings from 9.30am to 12.30pm and then from 2pm to 7pm, networking lunch from 12.30pm to 2pm, cocktail reception from 7pm to 11pm. Wednesday 20 January: welcome at 9am, conferences and meetings from 9.30am to 12.30pm and then from 2pm to 5.30pm, networking lunch from 12.30pm to 2pm, closing at 5.30pm. The website states that opening hours, participant reception and badge collection remain to be confirmed.

By air, three international airports serve the venue: Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Basel-Mulhouse. By train, Strasbourg is connected to the European high-speed network by TGV and ICE, with direct services from major European cities. On site, the CTS tram network frequently links the city-centre hotels, the Palais des Congrès and the European institutions; the city has more than 600 km of cycle paths and a bike-sharing service, Vélhop, including electric bikes. By car, access is via the A35 and A4 motorways, Wacken exit, with a paid visitor car park at the Parc des Expositions, rue Fritz Kieffer. Ride-hailing, taxis and car sharing (YEA!, Citiz) complete the offering.

For any question, the website refers visitors to its contact form.

How much it costs to take part

No price list is published, either for exhibitors or for buyers. The "Register" buttons in the menu and in the home page banner lead to the contact form, and the event page on abe's website invites visitors to book their participation with the project team. The website does not specify the conditions of participation, including those for buyers.

Beyond participation fees, an exhibitor's budget will also include travel to Strasbourg and, depending on where they are travelling from, accommodation: the convention runs from Tuesday morning to Wednesday 5.30pm, with a cocktail reception on Tuesday evening until 11pm.

Preparing your visit

For the exhibitor

• Register early: the process described by the website provides for consulting the participant catalogue and selecting meetings before the event.
• Prepare your pitch by drawing on the programme topics that speak to lessors and operators: obsolescence and spare parts, ETCS and FRMCS, digital automatic coupling, HVO, battery or hydrogen powertrains, energy measurement, cybersecurity.
• Prepare materials in English: the official website is written entirely in English and the target audience is European.
• Keep Tuesday 19 January evening free: the cocktail reception, from 7pm to 11pm, extends the day's meetings.

For the decision-making visitor

• Select your meetings from the catalogue in advance: the personalised agenda is built before the event.
• Choose between conferences and meetings, which take place in the same time slots.
• For a lessor or an operator, identify the sessions where the ERA is cited: ECM guide, ETCS and FRMCS, study on energy measurement.
• Plan your return journey after the closing on Wednesday, at 5.30pm.

Policy & CSR initiatives

Decarbonisation is a programme theme, not a commitment by the event: one of the displayed themes covers energy management and the transition, with net-zero-emission fleets and energy measurement, and one session deals with switching from diesel to HVO, batteries or hydrogen. The Rolling Stock Days website, however, has no page devoted to CSR and mentions no ISO 20121 certification for the event.

At the organiser level, abe publishes a company-wide CSR actions page: waste sorting in-house and at its business conventions, a preference for travelling by train, use of local caterers and suppliers for audiovisual equipment, furniture, security and cleaning, printing with local providers, eco-design and digital signage. They are presented without any figures specific to Rolling Stock Days.

The venue provides a better-documented framework. Strasbourg Events, which manages the Palais des Congrès and the Parc des Expositions, states that it has been committed since 2019 to a CSR approach within the framework of the ISO 20121 standard, built around three pillars: reducing the carbon footprint, circular economy, and developing the diversity of the region. It publishes its emissions, down from 4,350 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2022 to 3,850 tonnes in 2023 (down 11%), a 30% drop in its electricity consumption between 2022 and 2023, and 13.01 tonnes of biowaste collected and recovered each year. It also offers organisers the option to calculate the carbon footprint of their event.

How the trade show has evolved

Trajectory analysis

Rolling Stock Days was born from the meeting of two approaches. On one side, an association of lessors seeking to carry weight in European regulatory debates (ETCS, FRMCS, maintenance, financing), with the ERA as an institutional counterpart associated with the event. On the other, an organiser of business conventions that transposes its pre-scheduled meetings model to rolling stock. The programme bears its mark: the association defends its positions in four of the five sessions.

Its format differs from that of the trade shows in the sector. In France, SIFER is a biennial railway industry trade show, expected at Lille Grand Palais from 22 to 24 June 2027; internationally, InnoTrans 2026 was held in Berlin from 22 to 25 September. Rolling Stock Days offers a short two-day format, in January, focused on rolling stock and on the relationship between suppliers, lessors and operators.

Three unknowns will remain to be resolved after 20 January 2027: actual attendance, set against the displayed figures of more than 50 exhibitors and 500 participants; the frequency, which no communication specifies; and the real place of the exhibition, mentioned by abe but for which neither floor areas nor format are described.

All data that does not state its source comes from the organiser's website.

Unless otherwise stated, all factual data in this listing comes from the organiser's official website (rollingstockdays.com).