12/11/2022 0 Comments Railroad story level 10![]() ![]() 8-1/2 in., and not doubting that the Romans had adopted this gauge only after much experience, he determined to use it as a standard in the construction of his railroads. Upon measuring the distance between them he found it to be in the neighborhood of 4 ft. While inspecting some portions of the Roman wall through which chariots used to be driven, he discovered that deep ruts had been worn in the stone. It would seem that the responsibility for the choice of this measurement rests with George Stephenson, of locomotive fame. came to be adopted as our standard railway gauge. Many persons no doubt have stood and looked down a railroad track and wondered how such an out of the way measurement as 4 ft. ![]() The above-quoted item about the gauge of modern American railroads’ having been slavishly copied from the measurements of ancient Roman war chariots is a concept first expressed at least well over a century ago, as exemplified by this nugget from a 1905 issue of Popular Mechanics: 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! The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ behinds. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. 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 SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. 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. There’s an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses’ behinds. Thus, we have the answer to the original question. ![]() 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. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. 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. 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. 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 was that gauge used?īecause that’s the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. Here is a look into the corporate mind that is very interesting, educational, historical, completely true, and hysterical all at the same time: ![]()
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