15 Billion Euros for Trains that are too wide for the platform

[Steve]

Nice job, France!

The French train operator SNCF has discovered that 2,000 new trains it ordered at a cost of 15bn euros ($20.5bn; £12.1bn) are too wide for many regional platforms.

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

[spuwho]

Illinois Terminal had a similar problem in the 1950's when they ordered new coaches for their struggling Interurban from St Louis Coach Car.

The ROW's were all laid out in the 1900's and when the new coaches arrived found that many couldn't negotiate the curves or inclines with scraping or derailing.

Rather than fix the issues due to being cash poor they simply truncated thier routes and moved the stations to avoid the issue.

Within 3 years the service was dropped and the cars returned. A scrapper bought them and they sat in a East St Louis scrap yard for 30 years before being torched.