Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[pigtin]

Someone just sent me this: interesting theory, or is it fact... what do you think?

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.

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. 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 it?' 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 SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers
who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the
SRB's 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
SRB's 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.

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[clan chieftain]

So was Brunels gauge based on the wooden horse of Troy
_________________
The Clan Chieftain

[old gto]

I`ve heard this before, and I tend to believe that theory, as my grandfather was a fireman on a steam engine for the old Michigan Central Rail Road over 50 years ago.
_________________
"The only thing I`m sure of.....is that I`m not sure of anything!"

[Uncle Joe]

As all engineers should know, Brunels gauge was ''scientifically calculated'' to be capable of running high speed trains, as well as saving energy. Or so he says....

[Roverron]

This myth has been around for a long time now.
1) Roman chariots were nearer 3'6" than 4' 8 1/2"
2) The Romans left Britain in the 5th century, a long time for the roads to stay in good repair.
3) The average ruts in Britains roads in the 18th century were 5'11"
So here is the real reason for the 4' 8 1/2" gauge:
A descendent of George Stephenson's chief engineere wrote in 'The Model Engineer' in the 1950s that the original gauge was to be 5' with the flanges on the outside of the wheels. However this proved difficult when it came to the points so the wheels had the flanges moved to the inside but the distance between the rails stayed the same. Quite straight forward really.
And before you ask Stephenson choose 5' for his railway because it was the same gauge as the coal carts and it was expected that coal would be the main freight transported by rail.
Brunel actually called it 'The coal cart gauge.'
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To Hell with ambition, it drives a man mad, I can scarcely wake up to be fed.

[Penman]

Hi
If the SRBs had been made in Britain they would have had to be smaller still, because there are 2 guages on a railway.
The rail gauge and the loading gauge.
The British loading gauge, with the exception of the Grand Central Railway is smaller than that of the continent and I believe the American one might even be larger still.
I think I read somewhere that the new line from London to the drainpipe at Folkestone has been built to the continental gauge to allow European freight trains to come through to London but I don't think they will be able to go further unless the loading gauge is increased elsewhere.
Incidently the old Hastings line had an even narrower loading gauge so there were special trains for that line.

[BigHealey]

You mean the Great Central Railway, not the Grand Central, that is the name of one of the current TOC's (run between the North East and London on the ECML).
The loading gauge does indeed vary across the UK, although a commonly used one is W6 / W6a. CTRL is built to the European UIC 'C' loading gauge.

[Penman]

Hi
I knew it began with a G

There is a preserved section at Loughborough if anyone wants to see it, according to their website they run double track for their 9ml trip so it is like an old mainline experience.

[pigtin]

Looks like the horse's ass story is just an amusing fabrication then? Pity.

Years ago, in Amberly Chalkpits Museum, I saw a wide gauge bogey arrangement where a small loco of lesser guage could be lowered on to it and the wheels drive the axles. Pretty drastic

Don.

Having probably caused no end of amusement... I did actuall mean Bogie

[Roverron]

Forgot to mention in my post that originally the actual rails were much more narrow than those in current use but I expect everyboby knew that anyway. A friend's grandmother had a piece of the original track from the Darlington/Stockton railway in her garden. I seem to recall her using it to keep her clothes-line up.
_________________
To Hell with ambition, it drives a man mad, I can scarcely wake up to be fed.

[Geoffp]

A few years ago we went to Pompeii and it's so well preserved that the ruts in the stone roadways are still there 2000 years later. Our guide told us the ruts were 4' 8 1/2" apart and that looked about right, although no-one actually bothered to measure them I also think that there were 'points' at the junctions, but I'm not really certain on that one. Here's a picture I 'lifted' from a Pompeii site which should give an idea:



Geoff

[BigHealey]

Where the rail systems of China and Mongolia meet, the gauges differ, so, rather than getting everyone off one train and onto another (the sensible option!!!) they jack the entire train up, and swap all of the bogies over to a set of the other gauge! Imagine if Brunels broad gauge was still around, we'd be doing this every time a train ran into GWR territory

[Penman]

Hi
According to Wikki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_gauge_axles

[BigHealey]

I was only joking about standard gauge to broad gauge!

[Penman]

hi