I think the width of the train depends on the dress. Also, don't worry, no one's worn platforms since the 80s, especially not to a wedding or anywhere else you'd expect someone to be wearing a dress with a train. Don't bother trying to sell it to France, though; the place is brimming with fashion designers.

I feel like I may be missing some key contextual information.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27497727

Wait until they discover the cars are too long and wide to go through some of the tunnels and a train gets stuck.

""When you separate the rail operator from the train company," he said, "this is what happens.""

No, this is what happens when you rush to teach calculus to highschoolers before they master geometry. : )

I would bet the train was designed and built to specs but the specs from the client were incomplete.

That would be a good bet to place, seeing as that was explicitly stated as the reason in the article you yourself linked.

I just skimmed it.

Not unlike RFF when making their measurements.

Touche'

As the French would say "vive la difference"

or more likely "zut alors"

or merde

""When you separate the rail operator from the train company," he said, "this is what happens.""

When you have employment laws and unions who make it almost impossible to sack incompetent staff, this is what happens ;)

It is an amazing cock-up. You have to go to a lot of trouble to be that wrong. A lazy sod would have just used the dimensions of the old trains and would have been fine. To go through the process of surveying an unrepresentative group of stations to produce a wrong answer with high confidence takes some doing. If I was a suspicious man I would suspect it was intentional.

@ Maniac: "Could someone tell me how wide it should be so it doesn't hit any platforms or anything?"

3150mm

Glad to be of service.

This "wide" train your building - make sure you get release forms signed by each of your "wide" men before you sell the film to France (I never thought of you as a chubby chaser...)

Silly French. Here in America, where every student takes a mandatory ten years of calculus in high school as part of a STEM curriculum, we would never have massive engineering failures like that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/05/20/the-60-million-texas-high-school-football-stadium-wont-reopen-this-year/

Ten years of calculus?

So, they start learning calculus in grade 3?

Yes. And those damn Finns still beat us. Too many orange pickers and not enough scientists.

About this big. At least it's tradition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Train_wreck_at_Montparnasse_1895.jpg

Bloody hell. What kind of hgh school can afford to spend $60,000,000 on a sports arena?

It's Texas. Oil money, as in Big Oil. Need I say more?

Thx Jamie - I don't understand why more people who need reliable info don't just come on here