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Builders bungle train tunnel

As much as we bemoan the state of public transport in the UK, it seems we may be luckier than we know. Polish engineers are facing embarrassing questions this week after building a railway tunnel that’s too small for trains to actually fit through.

The costly mistake was only discovered when inspectors measured the finished tunnel in Warsaw and realised the roof was so low that no trains would get under it. Rail bosses claim the mix-up happened because workers who were laying new tracks didn’t talk to the team that was building the tunnel.

“During work on the tunnel, tracks were laid down on newly-raised ground which meant the distance between the tracks and roof of the tunnel became shorter,” said Polish Railways spokesman Marta Szklarek.

The cock-up is the latest in a series of public transport construction fiascoes in Poland. A tunnel built recently to divert lorry traffic in Warsaw turned out to be too low for lorries. And last year, the Polish road authority produced plans for two sections of major motorway that would have missed each other by five miles - each coming to a dead end in the middle of the countryside.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .