And vive la France 
It is a minor miscalculation, but one that will cost the French taxpayer a fortune.
France’s national rail operator SNCF - which runs its prestigious TGV fast trains - has sparked hilarity, anger and ridicule after building a new generation of regional trains that are too wide for 1,300 stations, meaning platforms will have to be “shaved” to stop them getting stuck.
The appalling blunder, which the French transport minister on Wednesday dubbed “comically tragic”, has already reportedly cost the state-controlled SNCF some €50 million (£40.5 million), sparking uproar at a time of austerity.
It was revealed by Wednesday’s Canard Enchaîné, the satirical weekly, whose cartoon showed a line of commuters on a busy platform being told: “The Paris-Brest train is entering the station. Please pull in your stomachs.”
The mistake was made as part of a €15 billion makeover of France’s Regional Express Trains, or TER, shared between Alstom, the French trainmaker and Bombardier, its Canadian rival.
The designs of the new trains were based on SNCF specifications. The operator on Wednesday insisted that only 341 new trains had been ordered, but Le Canard said the figure was 1860.
"SNCF is talking about the number of trains already delivered, as there have been lots of delays, which would explain the difference," said Alain Guédé of Le Canard.
Aware that France’s provincial stations – some of them ancient - came in various shapes and sizes, SNCF had asked the regional rail operator, Réseau ferré de France, or RFF, which is in charge of all French tracks, to work out the right measurements for the new trains.
Upon their advice that station widths varied by around 10cm in all, SNCF concluded the new trains could be 20 cm wider than their predecessors.
However, in an oversight that would cost it dear, the operator forgot to factor in some 1,300 stations built more than 50 years ago that are far narrower than today’s norms. “SNCF’s wise engineers forgot to verify the reality in the field,” wrote Le Canard.
The operator was subsequently warned by the Association of Regions of France that these trains risked getting stuck.
The worst-hit region is the southwestern Midi-Pyrenees, whose president has only just forked out 500 million euros modernising the local rail network. In the southeastern city of Lyon, platforms were widened as the new regional trains were at risk of colliding when they passed.
After the embarrassing faux pas, RFF discreetly started “shaving” the problematic platforms, and has to date widened 300 of them.
Confirming the reports of the blunder, SNCF and RFF admitted that the wider trains, built to “meet the public’s expectations requires the modernisation of 1,300 platforms out of a total of 8,700 in the French railways”.
"We discovered the problem a little late,” admitted Christophe Piednoël, RFF spokesman, who added: “It’s as if you’d bought a Ferrari and wanted to get it in your garage only to discover the garage was not quite the right size because you’d never had a Ferrari before.”
"It can mean shaving a few centimetres off a platform or moving an electric box that is too close to the platform edge,” he told France Info radio.
Frédéric Cuvillier, the French transport minister, said the error highlighted the “dysfunctional state” of the current French rail operator set up, in which SNCF and RFF are separate entities that view each other as rivals.
A bill proposing to merge the two will be debated in parliament next month.
With the price tag expected to be “far heavier” than the €50 million cited by SNCF, according to Le Canard, Alain Rousset, Socialist president of the Association of Regions of France, said: “We refuse to pay a single centime to resolve this problem.”
Jacques Rapoport, RFF president played down the error, saying there would be “no impact on passengers, ticket prices or taxpayers”. Besides, he added, 50 million euros were a drop in the ocean – a mere “one per cent” of expenditure on France’s train each year.
That argument didn't wash with Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, leader of the ruling Socialist Party.
“It’s simply staggering. I think that management must take responsibility for this. When such a mistake costing so much money is made, conclusions must be drawn.”
"Frankly, people wouldn't understand if we just let them carry on watching the trains go by."
Media commentators were furious. “Fire them all,” wrote Jérôme Beglé in Le Point.
“The boss of a private company who committed such a blunder would apologise before his board, his employees and his shareholders. Here, nothing of the sort! The state will pay and thus the taxpayer.”
“You’ll see: in six months the real bill will have doubled.”
Mr Guédé of Le Canard said claims that the blunder would have no impact on French taxpayers were totally wrong. "The state will end up paying," he told the Telegraph.
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