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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/24/2003 11:23 AM (GMT -6) |   | >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 ass 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 butt. And you thought being a horse's ass
>wasn't important??
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