> The US standard railroad gauge (width
> between the two 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 the US railroads were
> built by English expatriates.
>
> 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?
> The first long distance roads in Europe
> (and England) were built by Imperial
> Rome for their legions. The roads have
> been used ever since.
>
> And the ruts in the roads? Roman war
> chariots first formed the initial ruts,
> which everyone else had to match for
> fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
> Since the chariots were made for (or
> by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike
> in the matter of wheel spacing.
>
> The United States standard railroad
> gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives
> from the original specification for an
> Imperial Roman war chariot.
> Specifications 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 the Imperial
> Roman war chariots were made just wide
> enough to accommodate the back ends of
> two war horses. Thus, we have the
> answer to the original question.
>
> Now the extra-terrestrial twist to the
> story...
>
> When we 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 might 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 had
> 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 is about as wide as two
> horses' behinds.
>
> So, the major 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 wonder why it's so hard to get
> ahead in this world...
>
>Tom Blakney