Interesting facts from a Horse's Ass.....

[Richard Z]

Here is a look into the corporate mind that is very interesting, educational, historical and completely true!

The Canada and 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 the U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.

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 in the roads? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots.

Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. 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 what 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 back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.

 

Now the twist to the story..............There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. 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. The SRBs are made by Thiokol 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' behinds.

 

So, the major 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...

 

Richard Z.

[antonio carroccio]

Jee, I never know that The Englishman over sea has the name of "English expatriates"

Does they ever have been repatriates?

[sparky]

So, the major 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...

Great story.

Too bad Snopes gives it a False (with an explanation).

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm

 

- Mark Ketchum, Berkeley California

2004 Nero Corsa

1977 R100S

[Guest Nogbad]

Brunel wanted a 6 foot gauge which would have made railways way better and faster today. Unfortunately the narrow minded and short sighted prevailed. This is nothing new, the best isn't always the most successful. Viz PC vs Mac, Betamax vs VHS and the coming HD DVD war is another case in point.

[raz]

This is nothing new, the best isn't always the most successful. Viz PC vs Mac, Betamax vs VHS and the coming HD DVD war is another case in point.

Guzzi vs Honda

[Guest Nogbad]

Guzzi vs Honda

 

Oh I dunno. You wouldn't sew a dress with a ditch pump, or drain a ditch with a sewing machine would you.

[DeBenGuzzi]

Oh I dunno. You wouldn't sew a dress with a ditch pump, or drain a ditch with a sewing machine would you.

I might try.