do you know how they came up with 4 feet, 8.5 inches?

[Anonymous]

This story is incredible, so take a few minutes for  the read, and then sit
back and ponder the situation. Does the statement, "We've always done it that
way" ring any bells... ?
   In the United States the standard railroad gauge (distance between the
rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number, so 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 tram ways, 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.
  So the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches was
derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
  So  the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ***
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 ironic 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 at Utah.  The engineers who designed the
SRB 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 ***! ...and you thought being a HORSE'S
***  wasn't important.
 

[mersenne6]

...better run this one past any one of the hoax/urban legend web sites...I'm afraid it just isn't so.

 http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

http://www.dnaco.net/~vogelke/articles/railroad.txt

 

[rtraincollector]

Another line, another buys hook line and sinker this has been around for at least 10 years.

[NewbieLady]

True or not, it's a great story; I was fascinated! I'll think I'll choose to believe..

[Semper Vaporo]

Another line, another buys hook line and sinker this has been around for at least 10 years.

I have a book with a 1899 copyright date that contains the majority of the story (obviously sans the tie to the Space Shuttle booster engines).

Personally, I think that the 4-feet, 8.5-inches is a logical measurement that comes from an original measurement between the rails.  Originally the rails were placed exactly 5-feet apart, when measured from center of rail to center of rail.  But THAT "location" to take the measurement is illsuitted as the place to take the measurement.  The necessary dimension is the distance between the flanges of the wheels and that translates the nice, even, unambigous 5-feet, to be 4-feet, 8.5-inches.

[Anonymous]

I thought it was entertaining so I passed it on

[lionelsoni]

Charles, my hypothesis is similar to yours, but is that the 5-foot-on-centers measurement was of the wheels, which I think are known to have been ordinary wagon wheels to which the flanges were added.  Four-inch-wide wagon treads would have resulted in Stephenson's original 4-foot, 8-inch gauge.  (He added the half-inch later when he discovered that he needed a little clearance between flanges and rails.)

The gauge that I find most interesting is the Irish one, of 5 feet, 3 inches, or 63 inches.  This happens to be a preferred number in the ISO-3 R5 series.  More remarkable, the metric version, rounded to the nearest millimeter, is 1600 millimeters, also an R5 preferred number.

The closest competitor to this is the 800-millimeter gauge the Swiss use between Grindelwald and Kleine Scheidegg, but for that you have to go to the R10 series.

[3railguy]

It is a cute story and has been passed around for ages. In reality, when designing something such as a railway, whole number benchmark or datum dimensions are often chosen and everything else revolves around that landing where it lands. A steam locomotive frame could of been and even 4 feet wide causing the outside faces of the driver flanges to land at 4'-8". Add another 1/4" on each side for tolerances and you have 4'-8 1/2". Or maybe a whole number in feet for total tie lengths was established and a maximum rail gauge was derived at which kept the spikes from splitting the ties.

[J. Daddy]

LOL!!!

Very well done! I needed that comic relief of engineering standards.... you had me hook line and sinker.... I even fowarded this to few automotive engineers here in detroit...hmm how was the automotive wheel base developed....

thankyou for putting a chuckle in my day! 

[spikejones52002]

It is for the same reason that a Mile = 5280 ft instead of 5300 ft or 5000 even.

or why New Years day or the first of January is not on the solstice. The king at that time attempted to make up a standard calender. He reviewed the changes over the past 40 years. When he did his calculation he forgot about leap year day.

The Person with the most political pull or money got their way.

Before President Lincoln and the Civil War. Just about every railroad had its own gauge.

During the war the military had problems transporting supplies. During or just after the war they decided to come up with a standard gauge.

I do not have the CEO of a railroad at that time who had the most influance with Present Lincoln. His railroad was already 4ft 8 1/2 inches. He did not have to go through the expense to change eveything.

[lionelsoni]

Before the Civil War, standard gauge was the most popular single gauge in the US.  The South had mainly 5-foot gauge, however.  When those railroads were rebuilt after the war it was mostly to standard gauge.

Our current calendar was promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII.  It is a correction to the Julian calendar.  The motive was to stop the drift of the date of Easter, not New Year's Day, and to restore it to where it was during the Council of Nicaea, 13 centuries earlier, by skipping 10 days.  January 1 was not generally the beginning of the year at that time.

 

[edw]

   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 ***! ...and you thought being a HORSE'S
***  wasn't important.
 

As others have already pointed out, the story is clearly apocryphal. Furthermore, historical research shows that while the Romans enjoyed chariot races as sport, they did not make use of "war" chariots. The Romans clearly preferred to use horse mounted cavalry instead. The ruts in the old Roman roads in Britain, and throughout Italy, for that matter, came from ox drawn carts carrying local goods, and not from Roman chariots.

[stubbsO]

I was at the Sac train museum the other day and read that  the English set between 55 and 57 inches and American standards kept that as well. Then 'ol honest Abe decided to split the difference and make it what it is today, because back then the measurance wasn't that accurate as it is today. I found it kinda neat!

[lionelsoni]

George Stephenson built the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the world's first steam-powered railroad, to 56 inches in 1825.  Fifteen years later, he enlarged the gauge to 56.5 inches to get more clearance between flanges and rails.  That has been the de-facto "standard" gauge ever since, in England and in America.  In England, a royal commission made it official in 1845.  The (near) standardization of American gauge happened on May 31 and June 1, 1886, not by Lincoln's decree but by a private agreement among the Southern railroads to adopt the Pennsylvania Railroad's 57-inch gauge, later gradually narrowed to 56.5.

[anjdevil2]

Hey Bob, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the first steam powered railroad was the John Bull on the Camden & Amboy RR.  John Lewis Stephenson's project?  Are they related?

This was what I though was true. 

[johnandjulie13]

Richard Trevithick built the first steam locomotive in 1804, although it was not for commercial use.

George Stephenson built "Locomotion" (as referred to by Bob, above) in 1825.

The "John Bull" debuted in 1831 and was built by Stephenson & Co.

Regards,

JO