Not a joke... something to think about

Posted By: Stuntman
Date: Thursday, 7 September 2000, at 12:49 p.m.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5

inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in

England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines

were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's

the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the

tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons,

which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well,

if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some

of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the

wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in

Europe

(and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions.

The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? Roman war chariots

first made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of

destroying their wagon wheels and wagons. Since the chariots were made for,

or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States

standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original

specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are

handed

a specification and wonder which horse's ass came up with it, you may be

exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide

enough to accommodate the ass end of two war-horses.

And now, the twist to the story... There's an interesting extension to

the story about railroad gauges and horses' asses.

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big

booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid

rocket boosters, or SRBs. Thiokol makes the SRBs at their factory at Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit

fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the

launch site.

The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the

mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly

wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two

horses asses.

So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most

advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a Horse's ass!

Messages In This Thread

Not a joke... something to think about
Stuntman -- Thursday, 7 September 2000, at 12:49 p.m.

Re: Not a joke... something to think about
steve -- Friday, 8 September 2000, at 12:22 a.m.

Actually...
Captain Zot -- Friday, 8 September 2000, at 8:08 p.m.

 

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