Wrong Sized Trains Oopsie

We’ve all seen railroad bridges like The Can Opener (11 foot 8) Durham, NC where the clearance is too low for box trucks, semi-trucks, and really any vehicle a skosh over 11 feet 8 inches. It looks like transport officials in Spain found a slightly different point of failure.

As it turns out, not all train tunnels are the same size. In Spain’s case, some train tunnels are a little skinner than others making the modern standard train size too large to fit through some tunnels. Thankfully, when Spain ordered trains of the wrong size, someone at the train manufacturer caught the issue before the project went too far.

While the issue seems obvious in hindsight, two people were fired for the error and the train order was delayed by two years.