article imagePolish Builders Bungle Train Tunnel And Quest for Perfection

By M Dee Dubroff.
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Aug 15, 2008 by  M Dee Dubroff - 11 votes, 3 comments
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In Warsaw, Poland, a group of engineers have built a railway tunnel too small for trains to pass through and there is hardly any place left to go without a mask. Read on and have a laugh…at their expense!
There have been three major construction fiascos in Poland during the last two years and they are not only embarrassing, they are quite costly. A tunnel built recently to divert lorry traffic in Warsaw turned out to be too low for lorries and last year, Polish road authorities produced plans for two sections of a major highway that had they been approved would have missed each other by five miles and ended in the middle of the Polish countryside!
According to news sources, this year, in an unconscious effort to top all those who have gone before them, bungling engineers have been left red-faced after building a railway tunnel that's too small for trains to actually fit through. The mistake was discovered AFTER the Warsaw tunnel was finished. When inspectors measured, they realized the roof of the tunnel was so low that no trains could pass under it. Rail bosses claim that the error occurred because workers who were laying the new tracks didn't make their plans known to the team that was building the tunnel. (Well, duh!)
Railway spokesperson, Marta Szklarek, had this to say without her mask on:
"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”.
What can one say about the failure to plan ahead except to remember that old sign that reads:
PLAN AHEA
D!
Go figure.
article:258609:11::0
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