Posted on 08/22/2021 5:07:31 AM PDT by sodpoodle
Railroad Tracks
The U.S. 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 U.S. 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 tram ways 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 chariots. In other words, bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or 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.
Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that 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 larger, 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!
That is interesting.
In the old days when I forgot my tape measure I would use my foot as a rule. The foot measure is called a foot because..well you know the answer.
Bump,
For a small Sunday morning smile,
From someone who does believe that history matters 😇
GB,
Tatt
In millimeters, the gage dimension is 1435.
The square root of the gage is then calculated to be a nice round 56.5 MM
Yes, and the last part of the thumb is roughly an inch. Mine is 1.25 inches almost precisely, and between my feet (almost precisely a foot with most shoes on), and my thumb, I can do rough-and-ready measurements anywhere!
Well at least it is a standardize system. If not
there could or would be systems of various sizes.
It would be a mess if there were different systems
across the USA, etc.
And a mile is 5280 feet because . . .?
Great story. Regardless if any of this is true or not, we all live in a world that was built throughout history. The quote I learned that describes this reality was, ‘It is like a turtle on another turtle’s back, all the way down.’
The spread of my hand, with fingers outstretched, is about 8.5” fingertip-to-fingertip. I recently was furniture shopping and I measured a table using my hand as a reference. The young sales clerk was astonished. He said he had never seen anyone measure that way. I told him I had my hand with me always and so could run up a quick “ballpark” measurement whenever I needed.
Younguns!
Yup. My hand is about 8”.
Simple, traditional things we learned or discovered for ourselves when our heads weren’t buried in smartphones and such.
Because that’s when the person responsible for creating the mile lost count?
During WWII Germany and Japan were able to build the biggest ships they could but ours had limits. All US ships had to fit to travel through the Panama Canal and under the Brooklyn Bridge.
Why is the Pentagon shaped that way? Because it was built to the shape of the property it’s on.
To get the funding from Congress to complete it, after WWII it was supposed to be used as a government storage warehouse.
IIRC in the early days of American railroads there was no standard gauge and it was a mess. Most early trains came here from England so the gauge was standard for a while. Once we started making our own trains and railroads had a huge expansion almost every railroad had different gauges. Was so competitor’s trains couldn’t fit on their tracks. They eventually agreed on a standard which is the one we have today.
Cornpop
/random Biden
“It would be a mess if there were different systems
across the USA, etc.”
One of the problems in the south during the civil war was that there were a multitude of rail gages.It wasn’t unusual for rail companies to be small outfits that serviced a relatively small area.
Whoever built the stretch of railroad between, say, Richmond, Va and Lynchburg, Va would build it in whatever gage suited his needs and budget.
Freight would often be unloaded off of a narrow gage train and reloaded onto a standard gage train, slowing the delivery of freight by days or weeks.
In the north there were even more small rail companies but the rails were more standardized, simplifying the movement of freight and war supplies.
Exactly.
He was a Roman, and he just gave it up at
_
VCCLXXX
So, why don’t we drive on the left side of the road like the Brits?
Because the Germans build the first car.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.