Why is 4 feet 8.5 inches the gauge used?

[james saunders]

that is interesting...

[icmr]

Very good info.



Victor

Happy Railroading.[swg][swg]

[Tracklayer]

It's human nature to want to believe things that sounds good or that have a good story behind them - whether they're true or not...
However, I did enjoy this story very much - whether it's true or not.

Tracklayer

[wjstix]

The 5' story could be true, remember the earliest 'rail roads' often used outside flanges - or used regular wheels and the track had a flange on the outside.

[IRONROOSTER]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MAbruce

Sorry guys, but this is an Urban Legend. Only a small part of it is true.

See: http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm

Oh sure. But it's still fun. [(-D][(-D]

Enjoy
Paul

[davekelly]

I believe that the Roman chariot idea is a bit of an urban legend. The best explanation I heard (and I don't know if it is true) is that the gauge is not that weird of a number. The orginal thought was to have a 5 foot gauge. But given the flanges are on the inside, one needed to measure the gauge from inside the rail to inside the rail. Hense 5 feet minus two rail thicknesses (at the time) came out to 4 feet 8 1/2 inches.

[tatans]

Take a look at Pompeii in Italy, just for fun I paced the distance between the wheel ruts on the sidewalk crossovers and also the distance between the C.P.R. tracks here, hmmmmmm, pretty close (give or take an inch(or cenimetre) or two. so there must be some sort of coincidence here. Also ever wonder why a brick is that dimension, blame the Egyptians.

[MAbruce]

Sorry guys, but this is an Urban Legend. Only a small part of it is true.

See: http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm

[Anonymous]

Very interesting.

[IRONROOSTER]

Hadn't seen the shuttle twist at the end.[:D]
Thanks for sharing.
Paul

[gvdobler]

I saw this in a local garden railway news letter. It had no name as an author but I thought it was good.

DID YOU KNOW?

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” build them like that?
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 wheel 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 manner 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 rear end came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman Army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back end 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 a main fuel main. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs were 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 horse’s 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 rear end. And you thought being a HORSE’S REAR was a bad thing.

Anonymous