{"id":25872,"date":"2014-05-21T09:35:15","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T13:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25872"},"modified":"2018-01-11T16:26:57","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:26:57","slug":"new-french-trains-built-slightly-too-wide-e50-million-spent-so-far-to-modify-stations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/05\/21\/new-french-trains-built-slightly-too-wide-e50-million-spent-so-far-to-modify-stations\/","title":{"rendered":"New French trains built slightly too wide – \u20ac50 million spent so far to modify stations"},"content":{"rendered":"

SNCF (the French national passenger railway company) was very proud of the new fleet of passenger trains they’d ordered from manufacturers Alstom and Canada’s Bombardier … until it became clear that SNCF had been given the wrong dimensions<\/a> to fit in many of the older French passenger stations:<\/p>\n

It is a minor miscalculation, but one that will cost the French taxpayer a fortune.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s national rail operator SNCF — which runs its prestigious TGV fast trains — has sparked hilarity, anger and ridicule after building a new generation of regional trains that are too wide for 1,300 stations, meaning platforms will have to be \u201cshaved\u201d to stop them getting stuck.<\/p>\n

The appalling blunder, which the French transport minister on Wednesday dubbed \u201ccomically tragic\u201d, has already reportedly cost the state-controlled SNCF some \u20ac50 million (\u00a340.5 million), sparking uproar at a time of austerity.<\/p>\n

It was revealed by Wednesday\u2019s Canard Encha\u00een\u00e9<\/em>, the satirical weekly, whose cartoon showed a line of commuters on a busy platform being told: \u201cThe Paris-Brest train is entering the station. Please pull in your stomachs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mistake was made as part of a \u20ac15 billion makeover of France\u2019s Regional Express Trains, or TER, shared between Alstom, the French trainmaker and Bombardier, its Canadian rival. <\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Aware that France\u2019s provincial stations — some of them ancient — came in various shapes and sizes, SNCF had asked the regional rail operator, R\u00e9seau ferr\u00e9 de France, or RFF, which is in charge of all French tracks, to work out the right measurements for the new trains.<\/p>\n

Upon their advice that station widths varied by around 10cm in all, SNCF concluded the new trains could be 20 cm wider than their predecessors.<\/p>\n

However, in an oversight that would cost it dear, the operator forgot to factor in some 1,300 stations built more than 50 years ago that are far narrower than today\u2019s norms. \u201cSNCF\u2019s wise engineers forgot to verify the reality in the field,\u201d wrote Le Canard<\/em>. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SNCF (the French national passenger railway company) was very proud of the new fleet of passenger trains they’d ordered from manufacturers Alstom and Canada’s Bombardier … until it became clear that SNCF had been given the wrong dimensions to fit in many of the older French passenger stations: It is a minor miscalculation, but one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,62,1117,237],"tags":[590,156],"class_list":["post-25872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-europe","category-france","category-railways","tag-engineering","tag-fail"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Ji","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25873,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25872\/revisions\/25873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}