“Here someone screwed up in a scandalous way. It is inexplicable and unacceptable!” thundered Miguel Ángel Revilla, the president of Cantabria in Spain. The accusation is at the height of nonsense: severe.
Initially, a welcome infrastructure project. It was about renewing the thirty trains that circulated in the north of the country, a 40-year-old fleet on a rather special line that crossed Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla y León and Murcia for a thousand kilometers.
Renfe, the local equivalent of the SNCF, therefore orders these new trains from the industrial CAF. But very soon it is feared: if they are built, these trains will be too wide to pass through the narrow tunnels of this line.
heads fell
Fortunately, the manufacturer realizes this relatively early, before the project goes into production. But the damage has already been done, you have to start everything from scratch, thus extending delivery times by at least two years. The trains were to be delivered in the course of 2024. Like the budget that should greatly exceed the initial 258 million euros.
This is a calculation error in the measures included by Renfe in the project specifications and, obviously, a lack of knowledge of the specifics of the narrow gauge line. In fact, this link was operated until 2012 by a local actor, La Feve.
If the Secretary General for Infrastructures of the Ministry of Transport, Xavier Flores, tried to explain this nonsense, heads would fall. Adif, the equivalent of SNCF Réseau, the entity that manages the network, dismissed the head of inspection and track technology and Renfe and the former head of equipment management when the contracts for the new trains were awarded.
“We demand the Minister to find a solution as soon as possible. We are not going to touch the tunnels, they are as they are. Let them make a train that goes through the tunnels!” Miguel Ángel Revilla chokes.
In any case, Renfe had the good idea of making an old train on this line available to CAF, so that the manufacturer would have the right size. Maybe they should have started there.
Source: BFM TV
