**Abstract**

Change is the permanent situation we live in, fostered by three main drivers identified in the new European Industrial Strategy plus by the COVID-19 pandemics, which on the one hand is pushing SMEs towards digitalisation and on the other hand is pushing us all towards the need to recover and build a resilient – and sovereign – industry for Europe. These necessary adaptations should be exploited as an opportunity to improve their environmental footprint and economic resilience. One path to achieve this is the uptake of advanced technologies. This chapter identifies the needs and barriers for rail SMEs to adopt technologies and advance their level of digitalisation in order to improve their services, production processes and products. The analysis has received funding from the European Union's Competitiveness of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (COSME) programme under the Grant Agreement number: 101037897 — STARS — COS-STRAT-2020-3-05.

**Keywords:** railway, multimodality, SMEs, recovery, resilience, innovation, Europe's rail 2030, digital maturity, demonstration, advanced technologies, Blockchain network, clusters as mining nodes
