Madrid (EFE).- The railway infrastructure manager, Adif, has dismissed this Monday the head of Track Inspection and Technology and Renfe has done the same with the current head of Material Management after errors have been found in the measurements of narrow-gauge trains in the project, which did not fit in the tunnels.
CAF’s manufacturing of the new metric gauge fleet for Renfe -which had not started- will suffer a delay of between two and three years, due to an error in the infrastructure gauges in the Adif network statement, based on which the trains were to be built.
The Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, announced this weekend “imminent cessations” in Renfe and Adif due to the error in the technical determinations of the new trains.
The president of Renfe, Isaías Táboas, has ceased from his current responsibility in Material Management in the Technical and Operations Department to the one who was manager of the Material Management Area of Renfe Viajeros at the time of the gestation of the railway project tight, the company reports.
The dismissed in Renfe has held various positions related to the Technical and Material area throughout his career and in 2014 he was appointed manager of the Media Distancia and Cercanías Material area, a position from which he went that same year to direct the Material Management area. the Renfe Viajeros fleet.
That was the position he held when, in June 2020, Renfe’s Board of Directors awarded CAF the manufacture of the trains, after a bidding process that was affected by the pandemic, says the railway operator in a note.
Adif points out in its note that it has dismissed the head of Track Inspection and Technology “as a preventive measure”.
Neither of the two companies has specified the names of those dismissed or their specific level in the organization chart of the companies. Renfe sources explain that in his case it is an area manager, equivalent to a project director.
The two companies agree in pointing out that they will collaborate “with absolute transparency” in the audit that the Ministry of Transport will carry out on this error and “will assess their conclusions to proceed with the final organizational adjustments that are recommended.”
Trains higher than tunnels
The error was noticed in the design phase of the new units, which due to their dimensions do not fit in the tunnels.
In January 2019, Renfe published the specifications for the acquisition of 31 trains for the metric gauge lines, previously managed by Feve (Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla y León and the Basque Country) in accordance with the gauges included in the declaration on the Adif network and in June 2020 CAF was awarded its manufacture.
In addition to these 31 trains, the order included a second batch of another six units to fully renew the Cercedilla-Cotos de la Sierra Madrid fleet that has been in operation for more than 40 years.
The total volume of the operation was for CAF above 250 million euros.
Once it was detected that, with the measures published in the statement on the network, the trains would not fit in certain sections of the infrastructure, the entire manufacturing process was stopped. EFE
