9 – France Orders the Wrong Size Trains
When SNCF – the biggest train operator in France – decided that the time had come to upgrade its fleet, they went ahead and ordered 2,000 brand new trains in 2014. The only problem being that when going about the measurements the manufacturer needed, they’d only taken into account the platform sizes at the stations built most recently. The result was a fleet of 2,000 new trains that simply couldn’t fit in about 20% of French stations. This means a bill of $60 million to alter the platform in the stations, in order to accommodate the new trains.
