On 25 November, Next Stop: AI puts AI to work on real rail tasks, live, in a room full of rail leaders.
Most organisations have now switched on an AI tool. Far fewer have people using it well. Licences sit idle, pilots stall, and the few confident users carry on without the guardrails the organisation needs. The gap isn’t access. It’s habit, confidence and governance.
Rail knows this gap well. The industry’s AI in Rail Action Plan, published in April 2026, names data, governance and skills as the barriers to moving beyond isolated pilots. Closing that gap is what we do at Peak Intelligence. So we’ve built a morning to show what it looks like in practice.
Introducing Next Stop: AI
On Wednesday 25 November, Peak Intelligence and EMBS Group present Next Stop: AI at Pride Park Stadium, Derby. It’s a half-day for rail leaders that moves from understanding AI to using it, safely, in a single morning.
The first half brings together the partners who cover the whole route:
- Microsoft on Microsoft 365 Copilot, AI agents and the AI ecosystem
- CWSI on securing and governing Copilot and agents at scale
- Peak Intelligence on adoption that sticks: The Climb and AI Discovery
- Fishbone Solutions on getting rail engineering and operational data ready for AI
The Rail AI Basecamp challenge
The second half is where it gets practical. We’ve written 20 task cards drawn from real rail work, including:
- Spotting recurring defect trends in fleet maintenance data
- Turning an incident into a five-minute toolbox talk
- Drafting possession communications
- Writing a method statement first draft
- Building an obsolescence risk register
- Writing a board paper on whether to roll out Copilot
Every table draws one card. Using the DRAFT framework, they build a prompt, run it, review the output and improve it. Then partner experts challenge each table: is this the right tool for the data, is the data good enough, and who signs it off? Judges score every table out of 100, and the winning table takes home a prize.
The DRAFT framework
Every delegate leaves with DRAFT, our simple framework for getting reliable results from any AI tool:
- D – Define: the exact deliverable and format you want
- R – Roleplay: the expert role the AI should take
- A – Articulate: the rules, limits and context
- F – Format: the tone and structure of the output
- T – Think: work step by step before answering
It works in Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Try it this week, then come and test it on a real rail task.
HI before AI
We believe in Human Intelligence before Artificial Intelligence. AI adoption succeeds when people are confident, curious and supported. Learning live, on your own kind of work, in a room where it’s safe to get it wrong, is how that confidence starts. It’s the thinking behind The Climb, our adoption programme from Acclimatise for leaders through to Basecamp, Elevate and Summit. Next Stop: AI is a taste of Basecamp for the rail industry.
Every table will leave having used AI on a real piece of rail work, with security, data and governance built in from the start. That’s what adoption looks like.Matt Elson, Chief Growth Officer, Peak Intelligence
Event details
- Date: Wednesday 25 November 2026
- Time: registration from 09:15, close 13:10, networking lunch until 13:30
- Venue: Toyota Suite, Pride Park Stadium, Derby DE24 8XL
- Tickets: free for Rail Forum members, £49 for non-members
- Bring: a laptop or phone for the workshop
Places are limited to 120.
Next Stop: AI is presented by EMBS Group and Peak Intelligence, with Rail Forum inviting its members, in partnership with Microsoft, CWSI, Fishbone Solutions, Qualitrain and ISO QSL. Peak Intelligence is an EMBS Talent Group company.