IIRC what happened in France was indeed that the platforms were out of spec, or perhaps the specs were out of platform. The rolling-stock people asked the track

IIRC what happened in France was indeed that the platforms were out of spec, or perhaps the specs were out of platform. The rolling-stock people asked the tracks-and-platforms people for the specs, and got the latest version. The fact that several older platforms still in use were built to an earlier set of specs got lost somewhere along the way...