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RAILROADS -



Does the statement, 'We've always done it like that'
ring any bells?Read this email to the very end;
You'll love it!!


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.

Okay! 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.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet,
8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications
for an Imperial Roman warchariot. And bureaucracies
live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and
wonder what Horse's Ass came up with it, you may be
exactly right, because that's what the Imperial Roman
army figured. Chariots were made just wide enough to
accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

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 at 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. 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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