One way that I keep my data up-to-date is that when I change something in my "station" data (let's say it's an avatar equivalent) I have an update that's trigge

One way that I keep my data up-to-date is that when I change something in my "station" data (let's say it's an avatar equivalent) I have an update that's triggered across my "route" collection. So you would likely have to do the same. It works well for me, as the reality is that there's always going to be something that changes and needs to be updated. That's why Mongo has decent update queries.