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Jul 17th, 2001, 12:31 PM
#1
Thread Starter
Hyperactive Member
We've always done it that way!"
Does the expression, "We've always done it that way!" ring any
bells???
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 built 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 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?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and
England) for their legions. The 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 (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.
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 happens 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, a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years go by the width of a horse's ass.
...... and you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important...
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Jul 17th, 2001, 12:41 PM
#2
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Jul 17th, 2001, 01:15 PM
#3
Fanatic Member
Re: We've always done it that way!"
 Looking for a friendly intelligent chat forum? Visit the white-hart.net 
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Jul 17th, 2001, 01:43 PM
#4
Frenzied Member
I had heard the story Katie relayed before, though not with the SRB twist. Good thing the tunnel doesn't turn too much.
While I don't doubt that that story is true, as I understand it there was a time when American rail companies tried to lay different size track, much like the GWR. Their idea was, if you want to use our track, you will have to rent our special spacers to put onto your cars.
In other words, if you wanted to go from A to B and use someone elses track, you had to pay a tax. America began an early version of the Common Carrier Law. All track widths had to be the same, and no one could deny anyone else use of any track, though they could charge a very small tax.
The long distance phone companies have a common carrier law. For some reason I don't think the cable companies do, and this bothers me, a lot.
Travis, Kung Foo Journeyman
As always, RTFM.
WWW Standards: HTML 4.01, CSS Level 2, ECMA 262 Bindings to DOM Level 1, JavaScript 1.3 Guide and Reference
Perl: Learn Perl, Llama, Camel, Cookbook, Perl Monks, Perl Mongers, O'Reilly's Perl.com, ActiveState, CPAN, TPJ, and use Perl;
YBMS, but Mozilla doesn't.
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Jul 17th, 2001, 01:55 PM
#5
he he 
Katie, I saw/read that same piece of information not too long ago. pretty informative and makes you think.
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Jul 17th, 2001, 03:16 PM
#6
Frenzied Member
I don't know where I heard this from, and I imagine the policy has sense been changed, but for a time, all British artillery units had an extra fifth man.
When someone looked into why the fifth man was assigned to the team, and what his job was supposed to be, they found out that he was supposed to hold the reins on the horse incase it should fright from the cannon.
Now that artillery doesn't rely on horses to get around, no one needs to hold those reins. The position just wasn't dissolved as fast as the necessity.
Travis, Kung Foo Journeyman
As always, RTFM.
WWW Standards: HTML 4.01, CSS Level 2, ECMA 262 Bindings to DOM Level 1, JavaScript 1.3 Guide and Reference
Perl: Learn Perl, Llama, Camel, Cookbook, Perl Monks, Perl Mongers, O'Reilly's Perl.com, ActiveState, CPAN, TPJ, and use Perl;
YBMS, but Mozilla doesn't.
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Jul 17th, 2001, 08:08 PM
#7
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Jul 17th, 2001, 08:10 PM
#8
PowerPoster
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Jul 17th, 2001, 08:11 PM
#9
Monday Morning Lunatic
That's sick...keep it up!
I refuse to tie my hands behind my back and hear somebody say "Bend Over, Boy, Because You Have It Coming To You".
-- Linus Torvalds
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Jul 17th, 2001, 08:44 PM
#10
PowerPoster
Chris:
You spilt some love gravy on the couch go clean it up.
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Jul 17th, 2001, 11:02 PM
#11
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Jul 17th, 2001, 11:04 PM
#12
Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you just water down your vodka.
Take credit, not responsibility
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Jul 18th, 2001, 10:09 AM
#13
Thread Starter
Hyperactive Member
All excellent suggestions.......I particularily like the gravity boots idea!
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decided that they should lay a third rail inside the broad gauge tracks to let normal trains run on it so there was never any pressure to change (a bit like having a Windows emulator in Linux). 
Horse's Ass ? sounds like a horse's girlfriend or something
)
