I just had to pass this along. For anyone that thinks the era of the horse is over! Enjoy

Craig Miller *************************

Believe It Or Not

The US Standard railroad gauge (the 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 US railroads were originally designed and built by English expatriates.

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 measurement? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons.

Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? If they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads.

Why did they break? Because that was the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions.

And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots.

Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike.

And 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 army war chariot.

Specs 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 chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

-- Craig Miller (CMiller@ssd.com), June 09, 2000

Answers

Hi Craig, Loved the post. I come from generations of Irish Railroaders and am going to print and give to my dad. Bet he doesn't know this. He'll get a kick out of it! (no pun intended!)

-- Annie (mistletoe@earthlink.net), June 09, 2000.

This is interesting -- that something from two thousand years ago could still have such an influence today! I'm going to print it, too, and share it with a couple of people who enjoy history!

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), June 10, 2000.

That's kind of like the woman who always cut the ends off a ham before she cooked it. When asked why, she said "Mom always did it this way, I don't know why." She called her mom to ask. Mom replied, "I do it because my mom always did it that way." Mom called Grandma and asked, "why do we cut the ends off the ham before we cook it?" Grandma said, "What do you mean?" "I cut both ends off the ham before I cook it because I remember you doing it. I wanted to know why." Mom replied. Grandma begins to laugh. "The reason I cut both ends off the ham was because when you were a child, our stove was too small to hold a whole ham!"

-- Mona (jascamp@ipa.net), June 11, 2000.