Technical diagnostics is an integral part of the railway maintenance process. Through timely maintenance, in addition to ensuring the safety, functional and technical reliability of the infrastructure, maintenance costs are reduced and downtime losses, due to failures or premature repair requests, are eliminated or reduced. The track infrastructure diagnostic tools have evolved. This is related to, among others, the miniaturisation of instruments, reading accuracy during motion, as well as upgraded measurement automation and result analysis. Currently, data obtained from multifunctional diagnostic tools is the basis for the developed Russian railway infrastructure maintenance and operation digital model. The strategic development of mobile diagnostic labs is the gradual transition to solutions with advanced digital analysis, supported by artificial intelligence, monitoring and forecasting. The article presents the development of mobile labs for the railroad infrastructure condition diagnosis up to the current solutions, in which measurements take place without human intervention and the obtained information is transmitted in real time to the analysis and decision centres. Keywords: rail transport, measuring wagons, digitisation of railways, Russian railways