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 designed 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 had used for building
wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
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? Imperial Rome built the first
long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their
legions. Those roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts,
which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon
wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were
all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States
standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the
original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and
wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly
right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to
accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now,
the twist to the story:
When you 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. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at
their factory in Utah . The
engineers who designed the SRBs would 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 happens to run
through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through
that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and
the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses'
behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the
world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two
thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought
being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control
almost everything...
(no attirbution - got it in an email)
Regards,
Tom Watson
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/
Tom Watson <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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 designed 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 had used for building
> wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
>
> 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? Imperial Rome built the first
> long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their
> legions. Those roads have been used ever since.
>
> And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts,
> which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon
> wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were
> all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States
> standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the
> original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
> Bureaucracies live forever.
>
> So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and
> wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly
> right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to
> accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now,
> the twist to the story:
>
> When you 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. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at
> their factory in Utah . The
>
> engineers who designed the SRBs would 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 happens to run
> through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through
> that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and
> the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses'
> behinds.
>
> So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the
> world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two
> thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought
> being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control
> almost everything...
>
>
> (no attirbution - got it in an email)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Tom Watson
> http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/
You think that is bad, Toronto's (in Canada) surface streetcars and subway
use a 4' 10 7/8" gauge. Look up the history behind that!!
In article <[email protected]>,
Tom Watson <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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 designed 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.
When George Stephenson built his first locomotive for the Killingworth
colliery, it was built to a gauge of 4ft 8ins, which was the gauge then in
use at this colliery. When he later built the Stockton and Darlington
railway, and subsequently the Liverpool and Manchester, he adopted the
same gauge, though for reasons uncertain, an extra half inch was added at
about the same time.
If Isambard Kingdom Brunel's 7ft gauge, which he used for the the Great
Western railway, had been adopted instead, railways today would have been
very different. Brunel was a visionary who forsaw high speeds and
transportation of large masses, for which the wider gauge had many
advantages.
I know absolutly nothing about horses but it seems to me that 4ft 8.1/2
would be a trifle narrow for two horses to run side by side pulling a
chariot?
Stuart
In article
<8e00a080-9cd4-4aa4-9c21-7bb6de6f7f6b@j19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>,
Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
> It is an urban legend.
I know :-)
Stuart
On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:27:37 -0700 (PDT), Robatoy
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On Oct 12, 6:39 pm, Tom Watson <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:30:04 -0700 (PDT), Robatoy
>>
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >It is an urban legend.
>>
>> Did you read Snopes' explanation?
>>
>> It was lame.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Tom Watsonhttp://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/
>
>That it is an urban legend was mentioned on some site that dealt with
>all the different gauges. There are more than a hundred. Many obscure
>ones belong to underground mining railroads.
This thing has been around a long time. The earliest reference that
I've seen is 1994. It's been around so long that each of the elements
in the chain of causation has pro and con arguments all over the
place. Makes for interesting reading - like Rashomon.
Regards,
Tom Watson
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/
On Oct 12, 6:46=A0pm, Larry Blanchard <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:16:18 -0400, Tom Watson wrote:
> > The =A0 US =A0 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 designed the =A0 US =A0railroads.
>
> <snip of very old legend>
>
> Actually, I read (and don't remember where) that the gauge was supposed
> to be 5', but the rails were laid =A05' outside to outside instead of
> inside to inside. =A0It was cheaper to regauge the wheels than to rip up
> and re-lay the rails.
>
> I have no idea if that's any more true than Tom's legend, but at least it
> makes sense :-).
Gotta be an urban legend. How do you think rails get moved? You
don't think they would have noticed earlier?
On Oct 12, 6:39=A0pm, Tom Watson <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:30:04 -0700 (PDT), Robatoy
>
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >It is an urban legend.
>
> Did you read Snopes' explanation?
>
> It was lame.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tom Watsonhttp://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/
That it is an urban legend was mentioned on some site that dealt with
all the different gauges. There are more than a hundred. Many obscure
ones belong to underground mining railroads.
On Oct 12, 6:13=A0pm, Stuart <[email protected]> wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> =A0 =A0Tom Watson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > The =A0 US =A0 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 designed the =A0 US =A0railroads. =A0
> > 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.
>
> When George Stephenson built his first locomotive for the Killingworth
> colliery, it was built to a gauge of 4ft 8ins, which was the gauge then i=
n
> use at this colliery. When he later built the Stockton and Darlington
> railway, and subsequently the Liverpool and Manchester, he adopted the
> same gauge, though for reasons uncertain, an extra half inch was added at
> about the same time.
>
> If Isambard Kingdom Brunel's 7ft gauge, which he used for the the Great
> Western railway, had been adopted instead, railways today would have been
> very different. Brunel was a visionary who forsaw high speeds and
> transportation of large masses, for which the wider gauge had many
> advantages.
>
> I know absolutly nothing about horses but it seems to me that 4ft 8.1/2
> would be a trifle narrow for two horses to run side by side pulling a
> chariot?
>
> Stuart
It is an urban legend.
On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:16:18 -0400, Tom Watson wrote:
> 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 designed the US railroads.
<snip of very old legend>
Actually, I read (and don't remember where) that the gauge was supposed
to be 5', but the rails were laid 5' outside to outside instead of
inside to inside. It was cheaper to regauge the wheels than to rip up
and re-lay the rails.
I have no idea if that's any more true than Tom's legend, but at least it
makes sense :-).
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:30:04 -0700 (PDT), Robatoy
<[email protected]> wrote:
>It is an urban legend.
Did you read Snopes' explanation?
It was lame.
Regards,
Tom Watson
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/
Robatoy wrote:
> On Oct 12, 6:13 pm, Stuart <[email protected]> wrote:
>> In article <[email protected]>,
>> Tom Watson <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> 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 designed 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.
>> When George Stephenson built his first locomotive for the Killingworth
>> colliery, it was built to a gauge of 4ft 8ins, which was the gauge then in
>> use at this colliery. When he later built the Stockton and Darlington
>> railway, and subsequently the Liverpool and Manchester, he adopted the
>> same gauge, though for reasons uncertain, an extra half inch was added at
>> about the same time.
>>
>> If Isambard Kingdom Brunel's 7ft gauge, which he used for the the Great
>> Western railway, had been adopted instead, railways today would have been
>> very different. Brunel was a visionary who forsaw high speeds and
>> transportation of large masses, for which the wider gauge had many
>> advantages.
>>
>> I know absolutly nothing about horses but it seems to me that 4ft 8.1/2
>> would be a trifle narrow for two horses to run side by side pulling a
>> chariot?
>>
>> Stuart
>
> It is an urban legend.
It may be. I didn't check Snopes. I liked the story anyway and passed it
on. I also claimed it as mine, after years of research, which is fine,
'cause most of the people on my list think I'm full of it anyway.
Tanus