NEW, wider tube trains to provide more sitting space for passengers. Lovely, but whoever ordered them didn’t check whether they would fit safely through the tunnels. Now, at great cost and considerable disruption the tunnels themselves are having to be widened.

One more story to add to the catalogue of, “delays, cancellations and breakdowns”.

But this isn’t Britain. If it had been, the newspaper headlines would have been screaming. It’s Germany.

“Rarely is the gap between stereotype and reality deeper than when it comes to the German rail system. Foreigners arrive in Germany convinced that trains run like clockwork...Those who live in Germany, however, know better,” was the acid commentary of the German news magazine Der Spiegel in 2010.

Our newspapers like nothing more than stories which knock our ability to run our country in an efficient way.

But it can go too far. There’s insufficient balancing coverage of what’s happening in other countries – like Germany – with whom we are often unfavourably compared.

Whilst the German rail system has become something of a national joke, our system has over the past 15 years showed dramatic improvement.

Last April, the European Union produced a major comparative study of the rail networks in all 27 EU countries.

Guess what?

Britain came top overall.

Most dramatic has been the astonishing increase in passenger numbers on our railways, in turn reinforced by rising scores for passenger satisfaction.

Of course, there’s loads more to do. Passengers on East Lancashire’s lines rightly complain about overcrowding, fares, reliability, and rickety rolling stock. But at least here things are on the up. Spare a thought for the benighted German passengers.