A very concise answer to a question about the reason for railroad track
spacing of 4 feet, 8.5 inches came through the Overland-Trails list recently.
 I thought it would be a very interesting piece to post here.
 
Mike Polk
Sagebrush Consultants
Ogden, Utah
---------------------
Forwarded message:
From:   [log in to unmask] (Tom Crews)
Sender: [log in to unmask]
Reply-to:       [log in to unmask]
To:     [log in to unmask] (Multiple recipients of list)
Date: 96-10-14 10:26:44 EDT
 
I am forwarding this information to the list because wheel ruts are so
important to OCTA <VBG>
>
><< 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 the US
> railroads were built by English expatriates.
>
> Why did the English people 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 use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they
> tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the
> old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel
> ruts.
>
> So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in
> Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions.
> The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts,
> which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons,
> were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made
> for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel
> spacing.
>
> Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States
> standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the
> original specification (Military Spec) for an Imperial Roman army war
> chariot. MilSpecs 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 chariots were made to be just wide enough to
> accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.
>
> Courtesy of:
>
>         Professor Tom O'Hare   Germanic Lanuages
>         (512) 471-4123  University of Texas at Austin
>         [log in to unmask]
>
----------------------------------
Tom Crews, Concord, CA
Following the Trail of the Pony Express
>From the Past to the Present into the Future
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Please visit the Pony Express Home Station at
http://www.ccnet.com/~xptom
----------------------------------------