NOT GOOD AT MEASURING

The French national train operator SNCF has ordered 2,000 new trains, at a total cost of some Euros15 billion. Unfortunately, the trains, which are yet to be delivered, have a problem; they are too big for many French railway stations.

How can that be? Apparently, the company responsible for the track infrastructure gave SNCF measurements based on modern platforms. These ignored the many regional platforms, which were built more than 50 years ago, and which were bigger (trains being correspondingly narrower then). Construction work has begun on narrowing the platforms (which presumably entails not much more than bashing bits of concrete off the sides). But 1,000 platforms still need to be adjusted.

Fortunately, someone realised that there was a problem before the trains were delivered. But the story does highlight some of the difficulties of separating railway infrastructure from operations. My brother, who worked for the railways all his working life, always said that it was a mistake to separate the two. A railway is a complex organisation, and the various bits need to work with, and understand, the other bits.

Walter Blotscher