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[quote user="John WR"]But Bucyrus,   Anyone who has ever walked through the snow knows that it is easer if you can follow the footsteps of someone who has gone before.  A dirt path will have a compacted area where walking is a little easier than on the grassy sides.  And a dirt road will have compacted areas, ruts if you will, where following them is easier than leaving them.  How much of a jump is it when following natural ruts to think that maybe artificial ruts would be more precise and work better, particularly when the same wagon passes over the same road repeatedly?   And certainly there would be a self conscious effort to create artificial ruts so I think that would be what you call "invention."  And I think it would also be evolution. John[/quote] I understand your point, but I think you are blending a couple principles together.  The tracks made in snow become denser than the surrounding undisturbed snow over a couple days or so.  Thus they provide better support for the next person who steps in them. The ruts of a road do get compacted and develop better support over time.  They also become cleared of obstructions and mark the way.  But the ruts of hard stone surfaced wagonways were intended too provided wheel guidance just like a railroad.  There is no analogy between those ruts and the common wheel paths of the “two rut roads” that wind through so many forests today.  As you say, those dirt road ruts are easier to follow, but it is only because they of free of obstacles, and not because they provide physical guidance.  The ruts of wagonways were grooves deep enough, and with sides close enough to vertical to prevent wheels from climbing out of them.  They were in effect, flanged rails.  Each rut was analogous to a rail with two flanges constituted by the two sides of the groove.   They would not inherently need double flanges, but that is the natural result of a guiding groove.  And I suppose the double flanges gave the wheels a choice of being guided by either the inner flanges or the outer ones, depending on the exact wheel track dimension and wheel width.  This would have provided handy fit tolerance in the building of the wheeled equipment to match wagonways.   I would bet that they measured the gage of wagonways to the centers of the ruts and the centers of the wheels, but it is only a guess.
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