Maybe because it's Monday morning, History Lesson

[whulsey]

AN INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON.

Railroad tracks. This is fascinating. Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding of it will depend on the earlier part of the content.

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 pacing.

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.

[willygoat]

:D:D That's HILARIOUS!!!!!! I just laughed a little in class. Oops. My studetns are looking at me funny now. Thanks!!!!!!! :p

[SCEtoAUX]

That is freakin' funny.:D :D
History. Don'tcha just love it? :D

[Sakrison]

I hate to throw cold water on your Monday morning history lesson, but as both a railroad buff and a history buff, I have to tell you that the story you've passed along is mostly blarney. It has been floating around the Internet for years and though it is very entertaining, there's not much fact in it.

Early American railroads were not mostly built by British expatriates and until after the Civil War, there was no standard gauge in the U.S. Major American railroads ran on at least three different gauges until the North won the Civil war and regauged most of the southern (and some northern) tracks. In Europe, where the story would have 4'8.5" originating, the variety of gauges was even more chaotic until the end of the 19th Century.

As for the shuttle tanks, no modern railroad could ever operate through a tunnel "only slightly wider than the rails" because no railroad operates rolling stock or engines that are only slightly wider than the rails. The location of the tunnel isn't identified but I'm willing to bet that any tunnel just a little wider than standard gauge rails would have to be on a single-track narrow gauge line, not on a Class 1 freight line.

The June 2000 US Army Field Manual "Rail Transport in a Theater of Operations" FM 55-20 Chptr 8 Railway Equipment lists the widths of common standard gauge American and foreign locomotives and rolling stock—not one of them anywhere near 4'8.5". In a quick scan of the list, the narrowest standard-gauge equipment I found was 8'6" wide and the widest, 10'6". For "Foreign Service" rolling stock, the manual lists track gauges of 4'8.5", 5'0", 5'3", and 5'6".

According to NASA, the Shuttle's external booster rockets are 12.17 feet in diameter. I've driven two-horse teams, from quarter-horses to Belgians—2,200-lb draft horses—and I don't believe I've ever seen a team of horses (except "miniatures") that could fit side by side in harness, in 4'8", nor have I ever seen a team that stretched 12 feet across. A typical side-by-side two-horse hitch can measure close to 6' across their rumps. A pair of big-ass Belgians (descended from medieval war horses) might stretch 8' across in harness.

It's a great story and I wish it were true, but its "facts" just don't add up.

No worries,
--David

[looker]

Snopes labels it as "True, but for trivial and unremarkable reasons." snopes.com: Railroad Gauges and Roman Chariots

[Don Boose]

There is an underlying dynamic in the story, though: sometimes the loading gauge of a railroad, the width or height of the opening to a building or tunnel, or other such factors does influence design and operations.

One of the reasons the US Army opted for the M4 Sherman medium tank as its standard tank in WWII, rather than the M6 heavy tank, was that more M4s could be shipped overseas in the same cargo space than M6s. There were also doctrinal influences, but the cargo space argument was pretty strong. Since the M6 had heavier armor and could more easily have been up-gunned, this decision had consequences for US tank crews.

Because larger tanks were too heavy for Japanese railway bridges, Eighth Army in Japan in the late 1940s equipped the "heavy" tank battalions in the divisions with M-24 light tanks (for budgetary reasons, there was only one company in a battalion, too). This had some serious results for the first US units to go into Korea when the war started.

The early version of the DC-4 airliner had a triple tail because a single tail would have been too high to fit into a standard airfield hangar.

I have also read (but unlike the above three anecdotes, don't have the documentation on hand to back this up), that the Short Stirling had short, low aspect ratio wings (and, consequently, poor high altitude performance) because the airplane was built to fit through the standard width door of an RAF hangar.

I'm working off-site this morning, so can't call up the documentation for my claims, but can do so later if necessary.

Don

[whulsey]

Geez, it's a funny story to make a point, that's why its in the Comedy Stand. Thanks to Don for coming up with some real world examples.

[WildBill]

I guess things are never as simple as they seem at first glance. but both stories are quite fascinating. I say "More".
Wild Bill