Sorry this didnt get through first time. Here it is again but not as an
attachment.
Garth Green
Cape Town, South Africa
Railroad Tracks
The US Standard Railroad gauge (distance between the rail) is 4 feet, 8.5
inches. Thats an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because thats the way they built them in England, and English expatriates
built the US Railroad.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the
prerailroad tramways, and thats the gauge theyused.
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 thats 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 road?
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.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived
from the original specifications of an Imperial Rome war chariot
(bureaucracies live forever).
So the next time you are handed a spec. and told we have always done it that
way and wonder what horses arse came up with that, 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 in 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. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is
slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you know,
is about as wide as two horses behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the worlds most
advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by
the width of a Horses arse.
And you thought being a horses arse wasnt important!
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