Railroad Tracks

[Doc Vernon]

The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between therails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.

That's an exceedingly odd number.Why wasthat gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, andEnglish expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?


Because the first rail lines were built by the samepeople 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 thesame jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used thatwheel spacing.


Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheelspacing?



Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, thewagon 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 inEurope (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used eversince.



And the ruts in the roads?



Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, whicheveryone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.


Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, theywere all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.



Therefore, the United States standard railroad gaugeof 4 feet, 8.5 inchesis derived from the original specifications for anImperial Roman war chariot.



In other words, 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?', youmay be exactly right.


Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wideenough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.


Now, the twist to the story:



When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launchpad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to thesides of the main fuel tank.



These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made byThiokol at their factory in Utah


The engineers who designed the SRBs would havepreferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by trainfrom the factory to the launch site.





The railroad line from the factory happens to runthrough 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 isarguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined overtwo thousand years ago by the width of a horse's Behind.



And you thought being a horse's Behind wasn'timportant!



Now you know, Horses' Behinds control almost everything.



Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it?

[happy daze john in oz]

Yes, the horses behind does control all, that is why we often refer to our politicians as horses asses.