Innotrans 2018.
Fordyno was fortunate to attend InnoTrans2018 in Berlin last month. Our team spent 4 amazing days at largest transport event in the world. Some notable trends from exhibitors included battery and super-capacitor technology developments for off-wire rail operation, technological solutions to improve the overall network efficiency, an abundance of electrically powered buses, and integration of communications technology for health reporting of rail assets.
While there were many impressive exhibitors and displays, the highlights for us were:
CRRC Cetrovo Train – We were excited to watch CRRC reveal their new generation metro vehicle featuring a carbon fibre car body and bogie frame. While this specific train is a prototype and is not intended for service, it demonstrates a very strong interest and investment in composite technology for the rail industry, similar to the engineering design work that Fordyno has been doing. It was fantastic to see the huge amount of interest that it generated with asset owners, operators and car manufacturers alike. It encourages us to continue to develop our composite engineering solutions for rolling stock.
DeutscheBahn Ideenzug: the ‘Train of Ideas’ - filled to the brim with innovative design ideas for rolling stock interiors (and a couple of exterior ideas), the Ideenzug represented for us an interesting challenge to the status quo for train design. Several features that we would love to incorporate into our own interior designs included the interior green wall comprised of living plants, ‘standing seats’ for greater seating capacity, creative lighting that created a more playful space, personal noise cancelling by Silentium, and floor-to-ceiling digital displays providing more useful information and greater interest to commuters. Several features we’d love to have in our office that DB somehow managed to squeeze into a train were massage chairs, private yoga rooms and a separately partitioned play room for kids.
Austrade and the Australian delegation – of course we could not forget our mates from Australia featuring AFL finals footy on the big screen and the best coffee we could find in Europe.