A HISTORY LESSON

[Guest PeaShooter]

HISTORY LESSON

Railroad tracks. This is fascinating.

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? Well, because that's the way they built them in

England , and English engineers designed the first US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were

built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they

used.

So, 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 same 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 more often on some of the

old, long distance roads in England .. You see, 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 (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 or run the risk 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 ass 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' asses.)

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 ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important?

Ancient horse's asses control almost everything and....

CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.

[Garufa]

This sounds like an episode of the old TLC series "Connections".

Thanks for posting. I thrive on this kind of knowledge.

[Guest PeaShooter]

The Roman 'Empire keeps striking back'

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Standardization the Roman way. Ask a railroad employee and most wouldn't have a clue.

I think I heard Paul Harvey mention that several years ago, also. Good piece of trivia.

[McAllyn]

... and Meryl Streep was in The River Wild with Kevin Bacon.

Mac