The REAL reason for standard gauge spacing

[CSXFan]

I got this e-mail yesterday and I thought I’d share it with y’all since there was a big discussion on this topic a while back. I don’t know how much of it is true but its fun to think about.

Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells? ....read to the end...

 

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 @$$ came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army 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 made by Thiokol at their factory at 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 @$$.

 

Next time someone call's you a Horse's @$$, tell 'em you helped to design the Space Shuttle!

Have a great weekend!

[csmith9474]

Disregard that e-mail. It is not true. See the below link.

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

 

[orsonroy]

Oh good grief; not this old wive's tale again...

Simply put: go to Europe and measure the ruts in a Roman road; they're wider than 4' 8.5". Then go to a farm and measure a horse's butt; two toghether (with spacing) is much wider than that too...

[csmith9474]

We shouldn't give the OP too hard of a time. They were just trying to pass on what they thought to be a fun bit of trivia.

[CSXFan]

We shouldn't give the OP too hard of a time. They were just trying to pass on what they thought to be a fun bit of trivia.

Thank you Smitty. I just thought it was funny, I knew that most of it, if not all of it was false. Thanks for the link, I'll pass that on to the person who sent me the e-mail.

[CSXFan]

Oh good grief; not this old wive's tale again...

Simply put: go to Europe and measure the ruts in a Roman road; they're wider than 4' 8.5". Then go to a farm and measure a horse's butt; two toghether (with spacing) is much wider than that too...

Yea, I thought about just after I posted the original. So, I went down to my horses and measured their behinds. One horse, an Arab pony, measured 21". Two of them together plus 9" for spacing is 51", which comes to 4' 3". So it could be true......

This was supposed to be a comical thread, not a bunch of hard facts. Oh well.

[jbloch]

Smitty:

That snopes.com rebuttal seems about as conjectural as the original e-mail post to me.

Jim

[pbjwilson]

So do you know why the track gauge in Russia is wider. When they were building the first railroads the czar told the workers that everything in Russia is bigger. So the track gauge had to be bigger. One of the workers asked "How much bigger". The Czar said " About a pecker bigger". So thats why the gauge in Russia is 6" wider. True story. Heard it from an old Russian man. No really its the truth. Believe me on this one. It really happened this way.

[ProtoWeathering]

<BLOCKQUOTE><table class="quoteOuterTable"><tr><td class="txt4"><img src="/trccs/Themes/default/images/icon-quote.gif">&nbsp;<strong>pbjwilson wrote:</strong></td></tr><tr><td class="quoteTable"><table width="100%"><tr><td width="100%" valign="top" class="txt4">So do you know why the track gauge in Russia is wider. When they were building the first railroads the czar told the workers that everything in Russia is bigger. So the track gauge had to be bigger. One of the workers asked "How much bigger". The Czar said " About a pecker bigger". So thats why the gauge in Russia is 6" wider. True story. Heard it from an old Russian man. No really its the truth. Believe me on this one. It really happened this way.</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

That would make a Russian a bit above "standard" then. Funny.

The kind of people who post these things without checking them out are the same ones who forward emails and keep rumors alive. They should have their computers taken away and given a pad of paper, some envelopes and a few stamps to get started. It would slow down the aggravation factor a bit...

Btw, it's spelled gauge.

[fsm1000]

The spacing between the wheels of the average chariot was 3 cubits. Being 'about' the same as our modern rail system now. That is true but it is only an average. They have found some chariots and they were many sizes, but the most common for travel between towns etc was the '3 cubits' version.
Just thought you might wanna know.
As to the rest of the story, it seems to make sense they would go from chariot axles to coach axles and simply make the the same or similar size.
:)
I hope that helps.

[tomikawaTT]

When I see a thread title like this, I always make sure to install a pilot plow on the next scheduled train.

If the answer count reaches ten, I couple on a wedge plow and an extra locomotive.

If the thread grows a second page, I call out the rotary.

Boy, does the SNOW get deep!

Chuck (who believes that the US standard gauge was decreed by Congress shortly after the Ashtabula Disaster, 29 December 1876)

[selector]

The real reason is that a man saw the first rail locomotive that was being trialed from the rear, and marveled at its girth.  He opined that it was as wide as his wife, and added that her backside was two axe handles wide.  Stephenson, when he stopped laughing, thought about the measurment, and settled on it as his prototype.

Honest, you can look it up.

[CSXFan]

That would make a Russian a bit above "standard" then. Funny. The kind of people who post these things without checking them out are the same ones who forward emails and keep rumors alive. They should have their computers taken away and given a pad of paper, some envelopes and a few stamps to get started. It would slow down the aggravation factor a bit... Btw, it's spelled gauge.

I'm sorry if I offended you Neutrino, but I like my computer and I will not let you take it. I did not intend for people to interpret the e-mail as fact, but more as an entertaining story. I just thought it was funny. So if it will make the world a better place, I will delete this thread so no one else is mislead.

Oh, thanks for the spelling tip, now I really feel stupid.

[csmith9474]

Smitty:

That snopes.com rebuttal seems about as conjectural as the original e-mail post to me.

Jim

Tell Snopes, not me.

Didn't we just go through all this a couple of weeks ago??

 

[marknewton]

fsm1000 wrote:

<"it seems to make sense they would go from chariot axles to coach axles and simply make the the same or similar size.">

Except that there's not a skerrick of evidence that railroad car axles were derived from chariot axles. There's not even any great similarity in mechanical design between the two.

I did once read an interesting article in a learned journal that suggested the practical limit for making f-a-g-g-o-t-e-d* iron axles in the very early days of railways was about five feet in length, in which the author *conjectured* may have been an influencing factor on the gauge. I reckon that there is far more likelihood of it being a prosaic matter such as this, rather than some fanciful twaddle about "war chariots", that influenced the early railway builders.

Cheers,

Mark.

* Sorry about the hyphens, but the stupid forum software censors any attempt to write the word as is...

[jbinkley60]

Smitty:

That snopes.com rebuttal seems about as conjectural as the original e-mail post to me.

Jim

Much of Snopes stuff is.  I have found errors in other parts of their lore.

 

[spidge]

Please keep sharing this kind of stuff, with the lower # of participation on this forum I see it as a place to have any kind of BS disscusion we want.

I think it is all very possible, but will we ever know. Wheres that wise old owl.

Do you think the romans had the same problem with the axles breaking if made longer than 5 feet, if so then even with the more modern methods the problem may not have been able to be solved. Thus since so much rail equipment was already in service we kept it as a standard?

Good thread, and if you don't like it don't participate.Didn't your mom ever teach you if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all?

[Pathfinder]

That would make a Russian a bit above "standard" then. Funny. The kind of people who post these things without checking them out are the same ones who forward emails and keep rumors alive. They should have their computers taken away and given a pad of paper, some envelopes and a few stamps to get started. It would slow down the aggravation factor a bit... Btw, it's spelled gauge.

I'm sorry if I offended you Neutrino, but I like my computer and I will not let you take it. I did not intend for people to interpret the e-mail as fact, but more as an entertaining story. I just thought it was funny. So if it will make the world a better place, I will delete this thread so no one else is mislead.

Oh, thanks for the spelling tip, now I really feel stupid.

No offence to me CSXfan, it is funny and I am surprised that some have not taken it that way.  I get this e-mail from my non-railway friends who know about my interests and it just shows they care.  Good one, I say  

[csmith9474]

Smitty:

That snopes.com rebuttal seems about as conjectural as the original e-mail post to me.

Jim

Much of Snopes stuff is.  I have found errors in other parts of their lore.

 

I have always wondered about that site. Especially "Much of Snopes stuff". Which specific errors have you found on their site? I would like to pass this info on to some other folks that I know that keep up with Snopes. I has assumed that everything was well researched and verified.

Again, please post links to these errors so I can get this out.

[tatans]

In Pompeii, there are wheel ruts that are pretty close to the standard gauge in use today ( I measured them) BUT, if you will notice the ruts are the deepest where the chariots met stepping stones across the street and the chariots had to fit between them, so there was some sort of standardization of wheel width (each town may have varied), miles and miles of Roman roads have no wheel ruts whatsoever( remember, traffic was both directions)   now the concept was NOT to drive in the ruts if you could avoid it, as seen by the lack of ruts away from the stepping stones, so the sizing of the wheels was not due to the ruts but the spacing of the stepping stones in towns.So I guess you could lay the blame on the work crew who were sent out to lay down the first stepping stones-----isn't this as good a theory as any???

[MisterBeasley]

CSXFan, did you really go out with a tape measure and measure a couple of horses' behinds?  I think that scene would have been a keeper for Photo Fun.

[CSXFan]

Yes, but with a steel yardstick.

I've got WAY too much time on my hands.