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? The first long distance roads in
Europe and England were built by Imperial Rome...for their legions. The
roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? Roman war chariots first
made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of
destroying their wagon wheels and wagons. Since the chariots were made
for, or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel
spacing. Thus, we have the answer to the original question. 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 which 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.
And 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.
Thiokol makes the SRBs at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the
SRBs had preferred to make them a bit wider, but the SRBs had to be
shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line
from the factory had 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, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced
transportation system was determined by the width of a Horse's ass!
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