Railworks America

OK, so this is a really, really big "OOPS" Seriously.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e2cc2782-e0c2 ... abdc0.html

I wonder, do these trains really grind to a halt? Saves on brake pads I suppose.

It's not the first time this sort of thing has happened. IIRC there was a similar controversy over the Acela Express sets with respect to width over the beltrail, as well as with the envelope of the carbody tilt at speed. One of the last classes of REA 50-foot express refrigerators was restricted to operation south of Philadelphia due to platform widths. The Phladelphia & Western's first steel cars - the largely-forgotten 50 series - had similar problems with carbody width, and spent most of their service lives restrricted to short-turn service to Bryn Mawr. There are other examples of equipment ending up overwidth (and/or overweight), forcing service restrictions as a result, but I don't remember most of the ones I've run across this early in the morning.

BTW, the New Haven's FL-9s ended up with five axles because of weight restrictions then in place on the Park Avenue Viaduct. I understand, form some of those who were around at the time, that ths is one of a number fo things EMD's engineers didn't anticipate. Sometimes these sots of things happen, despite the best of intentions.

We have le measuring tape, but it is in centimeters.

As I noted on RSC's Facebook page or some similar non-place, the Italians did something similar a few years ago when they built a "high-speed", direct connection between Rome's Stazione termini and the Fumicino airport. The final section of track into the airport passed through an openwork structure of pipes and when they ran the inaugural train they discovered that it could not pass through that structure. Back to the drawing board! This happened before the advent of the EU, so it can't be blamed on the government sprouts at Brussels.

I'm glad they solved the problem by the time I rode this train in 2012.
I remember I panicked when the train arrived right on time, I thought I made a mistake and landed in the wrong country.