Old news that may be New news to many ...(it certainly was new news to me.)
I wasn't sure where to put this. Please read my note at the end.RAILROAD TRACKS ARE HOW WIDE APART?(a 2000 year old engineering constraint)
Does the statement, "We've always done it like that," 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.
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 back ends of the rear ends of two war horses ... or 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 !!!
(You need look no further than your national government to confirm this.) ...
NOTE: I am currently separated from my Playmobil, so I can't look at a Playmobil chariot or a Playmobil wagon or a Playmobil train to verify whether or not Playmobil is aware of this historical reference.
Because Playmobil adopted LGB's narrow gauge standard for their trains, the train tracks should not be as wide as the Roman chariot wheels. However, according to this historical reference, all the horse drawn wagons should be the same width as the Roman chariot wheels.
NOTE to MODERATORS: You may choose to move this topic to the PFZ. Even though there is some humor/humour in this article, I really didn't know where the best fit might be. I even thought about putting it under trains, but didn't want our Roman theme collectors to miss it. On the other hand, after everyone has read it, we may just want to delete it ...
All the best,
Richard
