RAILROAD TRACKS AND THE WORLD

[Ol' Ken]

The Empires strike back! And you thought it was all about a horse's arse.

Railroad tracks.
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 two horses' asses. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important ? Ancient horses' asses control almost everything... and current Horses' Asses in government are controlling everything else !

______________________________________________________________________________

 

[SuperjazzyJa]

Thanx for sharing Ken! Amazing how funny truth can be.

 

[Frankie's Market]

Well my understanding is that "if" they had been built on the east coast, and "if" they were shipped on the old Erie Railroad Freight lines that would not have been an issue since the tunnels for the Erie railroad were oversize, possibly double the width of a single wide track? Don't take my word as gospel truth, but I thought that is what I learned many years ago. Could someone verify?

 

[Erik Tracy]

How totally bizarre!!

I just got back from a road trip to New Mexico to see my folks in Santa Fe, and we took a trip up to Chama to ride the historic Cumbres and Toltec narrow gauge.

As we were sitting in the Cumbres Suites lodge eating breakfast, I picked up a copy of the Chama Valley Times newspaper this Tuesday and read the EXACT same article!

 

[Tom Brennan]

There was no such thing as a Roman war chariot, indeed, in Roman Imperial times except among the backwards Celts of the British Isles chariots hadn't been used in war for a very long time, ever since Steppe peoples bred horses large enough to ride, thus making true cavalry possible. Note the disastrous flop of Darius's already long obsolete chariots against the Macedonians at Gaugamela in 331 BCE. This was long before Rome was a power outside Italy.

Romans were primarily infantry, indeed their native cavalry was of indifferent quality and they preferred using mercenary or auxiliary cavalry from North Africa, Gaul, Germany and the Steppes. Roman officers walked with their troops or went ahorse.

 

[Erik Tracy]

There was no such thing as a Roman war chariot, indeed, in Roman Imperial times except among the backwards Celts of the British Isles chariots hadn't been used in war for a very long time, ever since Steppe peoples bred horses large enough to ride, thus making true cavalry possible. Note the disastrous flop of Darius's already long obsolete chariots against the Macedonians at Gaugamela in 331 BCE. This was long before Rome was a power outside Italy.

Romans were primarily infantry, indeed their native cavalry was of indifferent quality and they preferred using mercenary or auxiliary cavalry from North Africa, Gaul, Germany and the Steppes. Roman officers walked with their troops or went ahorse.

So Romans *never* used carts or wagons, right?

 

[Tom Brennan]

So Romans *never* used carts or wagons, right?

Does it follow that because there were no Roman war chariots they didn't use carts and wagons? Of course they used carts and wagons, and the army used them to carry "impedimenta"--baggage and supplies. I'm rebutting the notion that "Roman war chariots" were the reason for railroad gauges.

 

[toxcrusadr]

I tend to agree, I've read some debunking of this (admittedly great) story. One angle is that people made the first carts and wagons of a size that was 'reasonable', able to be pulled by a person or an oxen or whatever, able to fit places they wanted to go with it, basically on a 'human scale'. Wagons in the old West were wide enough for two people on the front seat. That sort of thing. People are roughly the same size they were then. If we were to start over without any old Roman roads and wagon tracks, we'd probably do something very similar today.

The space shuttle engine thing is an addition I had not previously seen. I would argue that there are other ways to ship a big cylinder.

Heck, if I'm not mistaken...oh yeah here it is...

 

[Tom Brennan]

I've long thought it would be cool to name a band "Cimbri and the Two-Tones".

 

[BigElCat]

According to this, the Britons used war chariots to good effect against the Romans as late as 55 BC.

https://sites.google.com/site/historyofthewarhorse1/horses-in-the-ancient-world/macedonia

You have successfully dispelled my idea that Roman officers rode in chariots during battle. I suppose that notion came from Hollywood.

Wikipedia mentions the "popular legend" about RR track gauge stemming from the width of chariot ruts. 1937 is mentioned as the year to which the legend can be traced.

 

[savatage1973]

This thread strikes home with me, because my father (now retired) was a "transportation engineer" for Westinghouse Electric. At our local facility in NW PA, they built transformers for power plants and major substations/distribution stations. His job was to figure out how to get it to its intended destination. So you built a transformer (literally the size of a house) in PA and it needs to get to Houston, TX--how do you get it there? Weight limits on bridges, sizes of tunnels, height of overpasses and power lines, and all the other BS for oversized loads. They built custom rail cars and truck trailers as "packaging" and then detailed mapping for the entire route. It is more difficult than it seems--especially with local permitting in certain areas of the country.

 

[Hajidub]

All I know is something's changed. When I was a kid in my parents car I would count the engines and cars, it would average 6 engines (4 front 2 rear) and 235+ cars. As an adult at the same crossing, there are 2 engines and never more than 100 cars. We in Colorado still have "narrow gauge" tracks all over the place also, mostly in the mountains, though very few trains still use them.

 

[BigElCat]

I was looking for the history of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The USA adopted it's standard (4 feet 8 1/2") from the Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania used the European standard. I want to find out why. I bet graft was involved. The Pennsylvania probably just wanted to pull European cars.

Found this so far;

 

[BigElCat]

The Empires strike back! And you thought it was all about a horse's arse.

Railroad tracks.
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 two horses' asses. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important ? Ancient horses' asses control almost everything... and current Horses' Asses in government are controlling everything else !

______________________________________________________________________________

Ha !

This seems like credible evidence supporting Old Ken's legend.

http://trn.trains.com/railroads/abcs-of-railroading/2006/05/a-history-of-track-gauge

It may be coincidence, but wheeled Roman vehicles did have a 4 foot 8 inch track width.

 

[Frankie's Market]

Well my understanding is that "if" they had been built on the east coast, and "if" they were shipped on the old Erie Railroad Freight lines that would not have been an issue since the tunnels for the Erie railroad were oversize, possibly double the width of a single wide track? Don't take my word as gospel truth, but I thought that is what I learned many years ago. Could someone verify?

Going to answer my own question, I was reading a book last night about the formation of the Erie Railroad. The book stated that originally The Erie had a 6 foot gauge track, so all tunnels had to be bored a significantly wider diameter than either standard gauge or narrow gauge railroads.

 

[slow_jazz]

Great read.

 

[2011etec]

Not to nit pick but imperial Rome did not start till Augustus(Octavian) Caesar on back it was a republic.