The effect of Ancient History on the 21st Century. (war, Roman, Britain)

[dynimagelv]

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 inEngland, 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 **** 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 Statesstandard 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... and

CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.

[Dd714]

Horses ass indeed. Not only lifted verbatim from some website (and thus violating TOS), but deemed FALSE by snoops.

snopes.com: Railroad Gauges and Roman Chariots

[noetsi]

I had to read about a lot of silly greeks discussing philosophy as compared to things that really mattered

[danielsa1775]

Originally Posted by dynimagelv

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 inEngland, 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 **** 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 Statesstandard 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... and

CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.

The US has a standard rail gauge? Down hear in Australia each state mamnaged to come up with is own differnt rail guage, making train travel from state to state impossible, until entirely new rail lines were built.

[harry chickpea]

Even the Snopes explanation misses part of the mark.

There are many mechanical and electronic devices that have a particular form because of physical laws and constraints. The early industrial revolution ideas were quite literally "ripped off" by Americans from Britain and France, and modified to suit local needs. Maine had a fairly extensive network of two-foot gauge railroads, and Colorado had an even larger network of narrow gauge railroads. Britain's "Great Western" railway was a very broad gauge. Eventually, all of these either failed or were re-tracked (with some notable exceptions) because the performance and cost of the standard gauge lines was far superior.

You don't save significant money building narrow gauge, and you impose load limitations with small equipment. Broad gauge provided a smoother ride but effectively doubling the gauge cost more in construction and added stresses in equipment. The range from about 4.5 to 5 feet is simply the best distance between rails to get the task done.

I love the 2' rail lines in Maine because of their uniquely human scale, so I fought the idea for years, but the book "American Narrow Gauge Railroads" made the argument so convincingly that it was impossible for me to deny it any longer.

[texdav]

i a not a railroad expert. But much of the variances are from no national standard set by government in most things.

[harry chickpea]

The cost of interchange was the real motivation towards a national standard. Human labor gets insanely expensive when you have guys shuffling product from boxcar to boxcar just because the gauge of the rail is different. When it gets down to assembly line construction, standardization also means less expensive equipment.

texdav, your idea is sorta right in a sideways fashion. The early railroads were much like the early personal computers. There, you had Apple ][, you had Commodore, you had the IBM PC, and so on. The technology was being tested out in the real world. With railroads, the technology was also being tested out. There were early monorails, the cog railways had a following, and the various permutations of steam power created a lot of variance. As the personal computer market aged, standardization occurred, focusing on the two market leaders. In railroads, a similar weeding out happened. One factor that was a little late on but had a cementing effect was the transcontinental railroad. Whatever gauge was used on it was bound to become the dominant gauge, simply because of the massive potential for traffic. Since the government promoted that rail link, it did by default set the standard.