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? Don't know if this
story is true but it is a fun read.
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 what
about 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, or 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?
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