History lesson on Railroads!

[Wanda the Witch]

No: HPFGUIDX 38577


The best one from Sabine!

 Does the statement, "We've always done it that way!" ring any bells?
> >
> > 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 war
> > chariot.
> >
> >
> > 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. 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 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 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



"When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and
are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things
will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be
taught how to fly."......Unknown.




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