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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

France had a similar (but more easily mitigated blunder): Trains too wide for station's platforms, requiring ~1000 platforms to be "re-configured".

> The error seems to have happened because the national rail operator RFF gave the wrong dimensions to train company SNCF.

> Our correspondent says that they measured platforms built less than 30 years ago, overlooking the fact that many of France's regional platforms were built more than 50 years ago when trains were a little slimmer.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27497727

I guess it's no surprise that Le Monde preferred to bring Spain's other example of their submarine blunder instead of their own French one :)

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Another example is the Amtrak Acela. The coaches were built 4" too wide, and as a result the expensive "tilt" feature could not be used along a major section of the route.

France stations weren't build as per the spec. That would have had to be corrected at some point anyway.

If I were a train-building contractor, I'd send someone with a laser rangefinder to a few of the actual stations to double-check the official figures. And also to every tunnel.

Unless these errors are going to be fixed at the expense of the government / railway company. not the manufacturer, of course. (Sad laughter.)

If you build it to the specs and standards provided, I'm not sure how you'd be liable. It's the clients mess up.

However I do wonder if the modern ability to do very precise manufacturing means that designs now often just push to the absolute limit of the standards. A few decades ago there would be be a bit of margin left in for error, but now we can hit the limits of the envelope fairly precisely. Which means the infrastructure needs to do the same...

In fact the providers didn't follow the procedure established by contract, which required them to measure the actual size of the ancient tunnels instead of relying on standard measures (which by law were required to be established following modern standards; they knew they would not be valid for the actual project, that's why they asked for an investigation to find out the actual size needed). [1]

The delay is not caused by any mistake, despite what the press and politicians said; it's being caused by the established security protocols being followed (for one) to avoid a catastrophe (which has happened in the recent past for not being followed).

1 - https://twitter.com/unodelarenfe/status/1623588179520413696?...

I'm pretty sure this was heavily covered it when it happened 8 years ago. This was also 5 times less expensive

Getting all stations to a common standard is the right thing to do, specially if you want to build trains accessible for everybody.

> France had a similar (but more easily mitigated blunder): Trains too wide for station's platforms, requiring ~1000 platforms to be "re-configured".

France's problem was entirely different. They designed a train up to spec, but it turned out that about 10-20% of train stations failed to comply with it.

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