Does the statement, "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 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 for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

And bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a spec and told we have always done it that way and wonder what horse's @ss 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 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. 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 @ss.

And you thought being a horse's @ss wasn't important ??

Very good Andrew.
My hubby works for Santa Fe RR here.

Thanks!

Vickie

This explains soooo much.

According to www.snopes.com this wonderful story is, sadly, false...

Never claimed it was a real story, but...I suppose snopes.com would clearly be the authority on all things historical. :rolleyes:

In fact...Snopes does NOT say its completely false:

Origins: This is one of those items that -- although wrong in many of its details — isn't exactly false in an overall sense and is perhaps more fairly labelled as "True, but for trivial and unremarkable reasons." Marvelling that the width of modern roadways is similar to the width of ancient roadways is sort of like getting excited over a notion such as "modern clothes sizes are based upon standards developed by medieval tailors." Well, duh. Despite obvious differences in style, clothing in the Middle Ages served the same purpose as clothing today (i.e., to cover, protect, and ornament the human body), and modern human beings are very close in size to medieval human beings (we are, on average, a little bit taller and heavier than we were several centuries ago, but not much), so we naturally expect ancient and modern clothing to be similar in size.

So, rather than going into excruciating detail about the history of transportation, we'll simply note that roads are built (or worn) to accommodate whatever uses them, and that for many centuries prior to the advent of railroads, what travelled on roads were mostly wheeled conveyances, pulled by beasts of burden (primarily horses), carrying passengers and goods. Physical conditions dictated some of the dimensions of those conveyances (such as the width of their axles) and largely ensured that they would fall within a fairly narrow range of variation: Horse-drawn vehicles, whether they were chariots or carts or carriages, all served similar functions, so practical considerations (e.g., the speed at which horses could travel, the amount of weight horses could pull, the number and arrangement of horses that could be controlled by a single driver) required that they be relatively similar in size as well.

That may suffice as an explanation covering the specific combination of horse-drawn vehicles and roads, but what about vehicles that travelled on rails instead of roads (such as trolleys), or that weren't pulled by horses (such as trains)? Why should they be similar in size to their predecessors?

Although we humans can be remarkably inventive, we are also often resistant to change and can be persistently stubborn (or perhaps practical) in trying to apply old solutions to new conditions. When confronted with a new idea such as a "rail," why go to the expense and effort of designing a new vehicle for it rather than simply adapting ones already in abundant use on roadways? If someone comes along with an invention known as an "iron horse," wouldn't it make sense to put the same type of conveyance pulled by "regular" horses behind it? That is indeed exactly what was tried in the early days of American railroads.

I love Snopes; it's so fun to debunk the BS that people believe. You might also check out The Straight Dope at www.straightdope.com, which pretty much says the same thing. (It's in the archives someplace.)

has anyone seen "A MIGHTY WIND"......its kind of along the same lines as (and is directed by one of the main people from) spinal tap....but its about folk musicians....anyway, there is this flakey pr person in the film who says "thank god for model trains....if there were no model trains they never would have come up with the idea for the big ones"...anyway, not that this actually relates, but its a funny line....and I guess to some degree it relates....anyway, I am just babbling now....good movie if you get the chance to see it...

Originally posted by missing_cues
has anyone seen "A MIGHTY WIND"...

I have never seen it, but I have a boy in the house who produces them occasionally...:nono:

www.about.com has an urban legends section that does the same - debunks a lot of those scare e-mails making the rounds.