Tracy;

LOL! Loved it!

Now this might say something about Standards. If Standards exist they must have value. So to be a Horses Ass must have value, especially to a horse. A spacing of 4’ 8” is called “Standard Gage”.

Now there is also another gage used as a “Standard” for railroads, and that is 5’ 6” and it is called wide gage. That must be based upon “wider horses”. Then we have narrow gage used by the lumber industry, which surely follows a pony’s dimensions.

There are some parts of the world that use both Standard and Wide gage. Australia and Spain come to mind. It is interesting when you are a passenger on a train and have to get off at a specific point because the gage of the track has changed and you have to get on board another train.

Since we are on the subject of trains here are two things I love about this subject.

Early during the history of England and trains the British Parliament allowed five different companies to run tracks from London to Scotland to compete with each other. You can guess what happened – yes the five companies went bankrupt as there was not enough business for five parallel tracks and companies to carry freight, passengers and make a profit. The government had to take over the resultant systems.

Now when it comes to railroads the French were unique. Before laying one tie or rail or spike the French first planned their railroad in every detail. Paris was used as the “Hub” and all tracks had to run from north, south, east or west through Paris. Paris was like the hub of a wheel if you will. Many people did not understand how Nazi Germany was able to get to Paris so fast when it attacked. The Germans loaded tanks and men on French trains from eastern France and made straight for Paris.


Tom



>The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
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>Why was that gauge used?
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>Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the U.S. railroads.
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>Why did the English build them like that?
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>Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
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>Why did "they" use that gauge then?
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>Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
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>Okay - why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
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>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.
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>So who built those old rutted roads?
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>Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
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>And the ruts in the roads?
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>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.
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>The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
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>And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with that, you might be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
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>Now - the twist to the story..............................When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launching 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. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider that the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
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>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.
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>.....and you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important!!!