Somehow I missed this when it first happened.

Spanish transport secretary resigns over trains designed too large for tunnels

New Civil Engineer | Feb. 23. 2023 | Ella Jessel

Heh!

Transport secretary Isabel Pardo de Vera and Isaías Táboas, the head of rail operator Renfe, have now quit their posts, bringing the number of people who have lost their jobs over the scandal to four.

The batch of 31 new trains was intended to upgrade the ageing rolling stock in the northern regions of Asturias and Cantabria and be in action by next year.

But the trains will now be delivered two years late after the size of the existing 19th century line gauge was incorrectly defined on the specification. The rolling stock has been designed to fit the specification for new infrastructure. The mistake meant the trains would not fit through some of the network’s existing tunnels.

Yet the Spanish Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Development has stressed that the mistake was spotted early and the trains had not yet been manufactured. “No public expenditure was made or incurred as a result of this situation,” it said.

The fiasco has caused a huge political storm and sent the project back to the drawing board.

… that sounds like a wee bit of ‘public expenditure made or incurred as a result of this situation,’ to me …

The head of the regional government of Cantabria, Miguel Angel Revilla, called it a “monumentally botched job”.

Renfe awarded the £227.5M contract to Spanish manufacturer CAF in June 2020, but a year later CAF realised that the dimensions it was provided for the trains were not correct and stopped building the trains.

Oh, and that … sounds like a second bit of public expenditure made or incurred as a result of this situation.