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American railroad tracks. This is fascinating.


Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding of it will depend on the earlier part of the content.


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 designed 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 had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.



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 in the road.




So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those 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. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.


So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's arse came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' arses.) 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, and 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 arse. And you thought being a horse's arse wasn't important? Ancient horse's arses control almost everything... and CURRENT Horses Arses are controlling everything else.

I knew it was some horses arse's fault

Okay Eric... that's bloody interesting and sadly, kinda funny too. But I'm confused. When I lived in Africa the railway tracks were noticeably closer together than over here in North America. I lived in Zimbabwe which was colonized by the English and Cecil Rhodes was initially responsible for getting rail transport started in that part of the world.

So I'm wondering... why would a train tracks be closer together in Africa as opposed to N. America when indeed both places were colonized by the English?

Keith, here's the portion of the "Narrow Gauge Railway" page in Wikipedia that pertains to Africa:
_________________________________________________________

Narrow gauge railways are common in Africa, where great distances, challenging terrain and low funding have made the narrow gauges attractive. Many nations, particularly in southern Africa, including the extensive South African Railway network (Spoornet), use a 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge. Metre gauge is also common, as in the case of the Uganda Railway. There used to be extensive 2 ft (610 mm) and 600 mm (1 ft 11 5⁄8 in) gauge networks in countries such as Morocco, Congo, Angola, Namibia and South Africa, but these have mostly been dismantled or converted. Some also survives in Egypt.

Because Africa is divided into many countries, railways built by different governments tend not to link up with each other, each country's lines connecting its outlands with its own port. Incompatible gauges are therefore not obvious. For example, a link from Nigeria to Cameroon would join 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) to 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in).

The railways of South Africa and many other African countries, including Angola, Botswana, Congo, Ghana, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe, use 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) gauge, sometimes referred to as Cape gauge. Kenya, Uganda and others use 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) gauge lines. In Tanzania former East African Railways lines are metre gauge while the TAZARA line is 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm)

During the period of British colonisation of Africa, Cecil Rhodes advocated the construction of a Cape to Cairo railway, linking all British possessions along the eastern side of Africa between South Africa and Egypt. While most countries through which such a line would run have cape gauge lines, Tanzania and Kenya have metre gauge lines, although the TAZARA line in Tanzania is cape gauge.

A nice piece of research there Dwight! My question's been answered to be sure but I didn't realize there are/were so many different gauges used throughout the continent of Africa. That's a bit of a transportation nightmare to say the least!

Maybe in Africa it's based on zebra arses

Dwight must have been bored

Sorry Keith, couldn't resist it.

Eric you should be ashamed of yourself (english expats) Mcphail as an example of Scottish engineers -- What about Scotty from Star Trek.

WASP?

I take it you're not meaning "We Are Sexual Perverts"?

Keith.
My humble apologies, if I caused any offence to your good self.

I hope the video cleared up any confusion as to U.K., Britain, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and england.

Oh Geeze Colin, no offense taken whatsoever! In fact I just took it as playful bantering so when I found that video I saw it as an opportunity banter back. All in good fun mate!

Did ya watch the entire video? It made my head spin!

Yeah Keith, Good video, hope more people watch it.
I can kind of see where the confusion comes in, if your not brought up with it.

Great little clip there Keith, as a Northern Irish (Ulster)man, with a Scottish family name living in England and have a business based in Wales. I cover the bases this way:

Football = Northern Ireland
Rugby League = Great Britan
Rugby Union = Scotland
Cricket = England (actually it is England & Wales)

In point of fact the two greatest railway engineers the world has ever seen were English (Stephenson & Brunel)

I don't know where you did these little bits up from Eric but I love this kinda stuff.

Seeing as I have come into this thread a little late, here goes.

Dwights reply showed what happened with railway guages around the world.

Here is what happened in one country.

Gauges used in Australia

The most used gauges are [1]

* Standard gauge 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) 17,678 km - mainly New South Wales and the interstate rail network
* Narrow gauge (aka Cape Gauge) 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) 15,160 km - mainly Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania as well as some of South Australia
* Irish broad gauge 1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in) 4,017 km - mainly Victoria, some South Australia.

While Irish broad gauge was the original standard agreed to amongst the colonies, standard gauge eventually won out, and many sections of broad gauge are slowly being converted to standard gauge.

How's that for confusion.

Think thats funny Dwight, you want to try living next door to them.

We wish were in the middle of the Atlantic, it'll stop all the whingers coming south