French rail operator orders wrong size trains

stop

France's national rail company SNCF said on Tuesday it had ordered 2,000 trains for an expanded regional network that are too wide for many station platforms, entailing costly repairs.
A spokesman for the RFF national rail operator confirmed the error, first reported by satirical weekly Canard Enchaine in its Wednesday edition.
"We discovered the problem a bit late, we recognise that and we accept responsibility on that score," Christophe Piednoel told France Info radio.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/20/us-france-trains-idUSKBN0E021720140520

dublinman1990

There is a report from BBC News about the trains here.

Dr.MickKiller

Merde.

Judgement Day

I wonder if the person responsible was on secondment from CIE.

dowlingm

Blaming the separation of infrastructure from operator is a bit poor - should SNCF make the trains too. Wait, it's the French, I shouldn't encourage them to think like that more than they already do.

whisky_galore

Dr.MickKiller wrote: »

Merde.

Sacre Bleu.

BeardySi

Sacré merde??

MGWR

dowlingm wrote: »

Blaming the separation of infrastructure from operator is a bit poor - should SNCF make the trains too. Wait, it's the French, I shouldn't encourage them to think like that more than they already do.

It's their version of political football. They're being run by the socialists now, so re-nationalisation and re-centralisation is the meme.

bk

dowlingm wrote: »

Blaming the separation of infrastructure from operator is a bit poor - should SNCF make the trains too. Wait, it's the French, I shouldn't encourage them to think like that more than they already do.

Well RFF supplied the data as requested by SNCF, but the RFF data was for only stations built in the last 30 years, but not older stations.

Yes, it is a pity SNCF didn't notice this detail, but you can't really blame them for this, they followed the spec supplied to them.

However to be honest this is a case of a mountain being made out of a molehill, for political reasons.

The stations are only 1 to 20cm too wide. It will cost just 50 million to fix the platforms. To put that in perspective, that is just 0.003% of the total cost of the buying the trains! Hardly a massive cost over run for any big project like this.

In fact, even if they had identified this issue earlier, they would probably have done the exact same anyway. Better to spend 50 million fixing the unusual platforms to be the same as all the others and benefit from having just one type of train, rather then buying two different types of trains.

This is really all about politics, the current government is using this as a way to embarrass the previous government who split the rail company into an infrastructure and operations company.

To be honest, Irish Rail have wasted far more money then this on stupidity like getting rid of the perfectly fine Mark 3's etc.

MGWR

bk wrote: »

The stations are only 1 to 20 cm too wide. It will cost just €50 million to fix the platforms. To put that in perspective, that is just 0.003% of the total cost of the buying the trains

Sure, "a million euro here and a million euro there, and pretty soon you're talking real money", to paraphrase US politician Everett Dirksen. Adding more to SNCF's €8 billion or so of debt (never mind RFF's €32 billion of debt) really is not very helpful.

It's not like SNCF suddenly forgot the station dimensions, especially if they handled the procurement of the new trains; after all, they had been administering the infrastructure themselves for the 59 years prior to RFF being "forced" into existence by the EU, never mind the train procurement that has been going on since 1997. This is just political football, albeit one that the EU intruded into.

metrovick001

With your approach to finance you could obtain senior job with Anglo Irish Bank with little difficulty.

bk wrote: »

Well RFF supplied the data as requested by SNCF, but the RFF data was for only stations built in the last 30 years, but not older stations.

Yes, it is a pity SNCF didn't notice this detail, but you can't really blame them for this, they followed the spec supplied to them.

However to be honest this is a case of a mountain being made out of a molehill, for political reasons.

The stations are only 1 to 20cm too wide. It will cost just 50 million to fix the platforms. To put that in perspective, that is just 0.003% of the total cost of the buying the trains! Hardly a massive cost over run for any big project like this.

In fact, even if they had identified this issue earlier, they would probably have done the exact same anyway. Better to spend 50 million fixing the unusual platforms to be the same as all the others and benefit from having just one type of train, rather then buying two different types of trains.

This is really all about politics, the current government is using this as a way to embarrass the previous government who split the rail company into an infrastructure and operations company.

To be honest, Irish Rail have wasted far more money then this on stupidity like getting rid of the perfectly fine Mark 3's etc.

bk

The point is, even if they had identified this issue first, the best course of action would still have been to spend the €50 million to bring the older stations in line with the standard spec for all stations.

Probably cheaper to do this, then buy two different spec of trains, which couldn't then be transferred between lines.

Upgrading infrastructure to bring it in line with a standard spec is usually a very positive thing. BTW It turns out that they had always planned on upgrading these stations anyway, as part of standard renewals, they just have to speed up the process now.

Trick of the Tail

It's an old story. I was in France last August and heard about this.

MGWR

bk wrote: »

The point is, even if they had identified this issue first, the best course of action would still have been to spend the €50 million to bring the older stations in line with the standard spec for all stations

Or they could have ordered trains with the traditional specs. It's not rocket science, as they say. Just a political football to try to push RFF and SNCF back together.

Irish loading gauge permitted (and AFAIK still permits) passenger cars of 10' 2" width, but the last ones used of that width were the Park Royals. Nowadays, we all have to mind the gap, even though the Irish railway system doesn't connect with any other system with a tighter loading gauge.

Yogosan

This is what can happen if you don't undergo the correct training.

CelticRambler

The ultimate irony in all of this is that these are regional trains, and regional train services are being severely cut to save costs and due to lack of demand. They'll be taking an angle grinder to the platforms of three stations in my area, but we've lost 30% of our services in the last two years and the skinny trains that do run aren't ever full.