What we know as standard gauge was established in the bill to build the transcontinental railroad. There's been much debate (and no definitive answer) as to how they came up with such an odd figure.
And no, it hasnothing to do with the width of a horse's butt. Although that's a colorful story, it has no basis in fact.
It is just as likely that it had something to do with the width of a real person's butt as that of a horse since no horses were meant to ride in the first locomotives or trains. Or, if you don't buy that reasoning, it could have been something to do with the average distance between the insides of wheels in "standard" carriages using the roads at the time. Maybe the original layers of track got a good deal on fence posts that were seven feet long, so they settled on 56.5" which left something near an even foot on either ends of the ties when the track was pinned.
The fact is that we are highly unlikely to have the real answer at this point.
Surfstud31 wrote:The history channel said it comes from the distance between the wheels on a Roman chariot. I never heard such a thing and I couldn't believe it!
In an indirect way, I'd say, sort of. But only because the distance made sense and worked. It makes sense that vehicles, whether on road or rail, were built to fit the propulsion system (horse, generally). I'm inclined to think that the actual 4' 8.5" came about from some rails in England being laid with a 5 foot outside gauge, then someone figured out the flanges should be on the inside, and that was somewhere in the neighborhhood of the current standard.
Jeff But it's a dry heat!
Oh no, not this again. (Offense intended.)
It's actually 11.3 packages of Kadee #5 coupler packs, laid end to end. And no, I don't know how somebody could have .3 pkgs of coupler packs. And yes, I heard about it on that channel between 152 and 153.
Now, how many horn-hook couplers would it take, if they were horn-hooked end to end... Wait, you can't...
It really is a classic "form follows function" answer. It's what works best given the physics of the situation.
Geez, I though everyone read all about this the last 10,000 times it came up. Anyway, Snopes sums it up quite nicely, and has at least since the article was last updated in April 2001:
"This is one of those items that -- although wrong in many of its details — isn't exactly false in an overall sense and is perhaps more fairly labelled as "True, but for trivial and unremarkable reasons."
and
"In other words, there was nothing inevitable about a railroad gauge supposedly traceable to the size of wheel ruts in Imperial Rome. Had the Civil War taken a different course, the eventual standard railroad gauge used throughout North America might well have been different than the current one."
See http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm for the whole story.
Steve
Neutrino wrote: Oh no, not this again. (Offense intended.)
OK, offense taken. Sorry guys, I did miss the last 10K times this came up. I just thought it was interesting. Didn't mean to be a pain in the neck.
The least unbelieveable excuse I've heard was that when George Stephenson was asked to engineer the tracks for the Stockton and Darlington, he started with the 56 inch gauge used at the colliery he was working for and eased it 1/2 inch to handle the longer wheelbases of the non-coal-bearing rolling stock.
That's no more ridiculous than many of the other reputed origins. And, like the size standards of ladies' shoes and men's hats, it sounds more refined than a simple (and honest,) "D....d if I know!" (Or care!)
Of course, my prototype runs on 1067mm gauge, not 1435.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
KlickyMobster wrote:The explanation from my PHD history teacher is that it comes from the roman gauge of roads. The roman gauge of roads came from the width of two donkey butts. Eventually, one of those roman mathematicians determined the average width of two donkey butts. Then, England, being under rule by the Romans, adopted the Roman standard for roads. This also resulted as the same standard for rails. That standard was used in America because A) Most people in those days were from England and B) The first locomotives came from England. So there you have it!
The biggest flaw in this story: standard gauge didn't exist at that point in time (your A and B examples above).
TomDiehl wrote: KlickyMobster wrote:The explanation from my PHD history teacher is that it comes from the roman gauge of roads. The roman gauge of roads came from the width of two donkey butts. Eventually, one of those roman mathematicians determined the average width of two donkey butts. Then, England, being under rule by the Romans, adopted the Roman standard for roads. This also resulted as the same standard for rails. That standard was used in America because A) Most people in those days were from England and B) The first locomotives came from England. So there you have it!The biggest flaw in this story: standard gauge didn't exist at that point in time (your A and B examples above).
Actually, that's the SECOND biggest flaw in the story. The first is the way the teacher convolutedly explained the width of Roman roads. He (probably being some form of hippie) thought that the roads were built for peaceful purposes. Hah! Roman roads were designed for one thing: to make marching of their Legions easier and faster. The standard width of a Roman road is based on six men across, the standard column formation of the Legions.
Roman roads were NOT rutted when they ruled Europe. Ruts slow down Legions as the men have to avoid tripping in them. Slave labor was cheap in the Empire, so they made sure that road crews were out refularly keeping the roads smooth. Once the Empire fell and the Dark ages took over, everyone kept using the roads but no one maintained them. Ruts formed AFTER the Romans.
Ray Breyer
Modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, circa 1943
4'8 1/2" or 1435mm is not a "weird" measurement, it's just the way it is. Nor is it even a particular standard throughout the world - many nations have big rail networks made up entirely of other gauges, either larger or smaller. Examples include 5'0" in Russia, 5'6' in India, Pakistan,Potugal and Spain, 3'6" in Africa, Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand, and extensive metre gauge networks throughout the world, to name a few. The choice of rail gauge was determined by many factors - colony or independent nation, the economic situation, the natural resources to be exploited, who financed the railways, who built them, who owned them, and who supplied locomotives and rolling stock. Or in the case of the US, simply by government decree. Prior to that there were many miles of broad and narrow gauge...
Going back to the very origins of railways, you'll find that wooden-railed lines were operating in certain mining districts of England during the reign of Elizabeth I. By the early 18th century where iron was available, iron rails began to replace these wooden pole or baulk roads. Surviving relics and documents indicate a number of gauges were used, ranging from 2' to 6' or more. None of these wagon ways, as they were then known, were in the vicinity of surviving Roman "rutways". While Stephenson favoured 4'8 1/2", Brunel built the Great Western to a gauge of 7' 1/4" - the Romans must have had fat horses down that way...
It's significant that this rubbish only does the rounds of the internet, although it predates this medium by many years - I have *NEVER* seen *ANY* reference in any well-researched railway history written by any reputable railway historian that linked the dimension of standard gauge to Roman chariots. And no-one has ever demonstrated any link between chariots, the early railway builders, and the rollingstock they designed and built.
I once read an interesting article in a technical journal that suggested the practical limit for making faggoted iron axles in the very earlydays of railways was about five feet in length, in which the author suggested may have been an influencing factor on the gauge. I reckon that there is far more likelihood of it being a practical matter such as this, rather than some asinine twaddle about "war chariots", that influenced the early railway builders.
Apart from anything else, from the very beginning there was little commonality between railway wagon design, and that of horse-drawn road vehicles. The main structural member of a horse-drawn vehicle is the body itself, whereas a railway wagon has a strong underframe to withstand buff and draft forces. The road vehicle had fixed axles with the bearing integral with the wheel hub, or the bearing inboard of the wheel. Railway wagons had the wheels pressed onto a revolving axle, with separate bearings and journals, usually outboard of the wheels. Given the divergence in design, it's difficult to see any reason why the early engineers would conform to the dimensions of road vehicles.
Cheers, Mark.
marknewton wrote:4'8 1/2" or 1435mm is not a "weird" measurement, it's just the way it is. Nor is it even a particular standard throughout the world - many nations have big rail networks made up entirely of other gauges, either larger or smaller. Examples include 5'0" in Russia, 5'6' in India, Pakistan,Potugal and Spain, 3'6" in Africa, Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand, and extensive metre gauge networks throughout the world, to name a few. The choice of rail gauge was determined by many factors - colony or independent nation, the economic situation, the natural resources to be exploited, who financed the railways, who built them, who owned them, and who supplied locomotives and rolling stock. Or in the case of the US, simply by government decree. Prior to that there were many miles of broad and narrow gauge... Going back to the very origins of railways, you'll find that wooden-railed lines were operating in certain mining districts of England during the reign of Elizabeth I. By the early 18th century where iron was available, iron rails began to replace these wooden pole or baulk roads. Surviving relics and documents indicate a number of gauges were used, ranging from 2' to 6' or more. None of these wagon ways, as they were then known, were in the vicinity of surviving Roman "rutways". While Stephenson favoured 4'8 1/2", Brunel built the Great Western to a gauge of 7' 1/4" - the Romans must have had fat horses down that way... It's significant that this rubbish only does the rounds of the internet, although it predates this medium by many years - I have *NEVER* seen *ANY* reference in any well-researched railway history written by any reputable railway historian that linked the dimension of standard gauge to Roman chariots. And no-one has ever demonstrated any link between chariots, the early railway builders, and the rollingstock they designed and built. I once read an interesting article in a technical journal that suggested the practical limit for making faggoted iron axles in the very earlydays of railways was about five feet in length, in which the author suggested may have been an influencing factor on the gauge. I reckon that there is far more likelihood of it being a practical matter such as this, rather than some asinine twaddle about "war chariots", that influenced the early railway builders. Apart from anything else, from the very beginning there was little commonality between railway wagon design, and that of horse-drawn road vehicles. The main structural member of a horse-drawn vehicle is the body itself, whereas a railway wagon has a strong underframe to withstand buff and draft forces. The road vehicle had fixed axles with the bearing integral with the wheel hub, or the bearing inboard of the wheel. Railway wagons had the wheels pressed onto a revolving axle, with separate bearings and journals, usually outboard of the wheels. Given the divergence in design, it's difficult to see any reason why the early engineers would conform to the dimensions of road vehicles. Cheers, Mark.
Like I said, it's simply another case of form follows function.
This is off topic but the question reminded me of the explaination of why the distance between the pitcher's rubber and home plate is 60' 6" and not exactly 60'. In the mid 1800s, there were many versions of baseball played, each with it's own dimensions. It was decided to standardize the way baseball was played under a common set of rules, and surveryor Alexander Cartwright was commisioned to layout the standard diamond. Cartwright intended the distance to be 60' 0" but when he wrote that on the original diagram, the second zero was misread as a 6 and it was written into the official rules that way. So because of Cartwright's poor penmanship, pitcher's have had to throw the ball an extra 6 inches for well over 100 years. I guess that they should be glad he didn't do that to the first zero.
PS. The distance of 60' 6" is the measurement to the back point of home plate. The distance between the rubber and the front edge is about 17 inches less.
Have fun with your trains
Yeah, I saw that show on THC.
They didn't decide ... they copied the UK.
They also copied the UK for some early smaller lines which were 3' gauge (another British Imperial measurement)... these lines mostly either suceeded and re-gauged to standard or didn't suceed and shut down.
Some US lines tried broad gauges (mosty around 5' 3" I think - again... British measuement).
As I've said before though the key "American" factor in the gauge deciion was Hollywood. 4'8.5" was the best distance for tieing heroines convincingly across the tracks so that ankles and neck would be on the rails. The movie $ rules.
Or, if you want to be boring... the UK/Eu gauge has actually been modified to 4'8.25 (or whatever that is in metric) beacuse the physicists/engineers have worked out that that is the best gauge within an near range of what the early railways probably just fell over because that's what fitted the bits of gear that they were using.
You could probably find other technically efficient gauges (Brunel tried 7'0.25"... why the 0.25"??? It has no equivalent in metric or anywhere).
Spooner went for 1'11 5/8" for the first steam powered narrow gauge railway. A gauge which is actually 60cm.
In India the Raj used mostly std, 1 metre and 5'6"... Why on earth suddenly use metre gauge? They also used 60cm.
In S Africa and other African countries we used 2' and 3'6" (2' NOT 60cm). In Ireland we used 5'3" and 3'.
Australia used std and at least two other Gauges... I think this depended on which State they started in... probably just wanted to argue with each other about what was right. As far as I know they still have several Gauges. (Incidentally camels used in building the big, long east, west route - The Ghan - {'cos it was mainly built using Afgan labour... unlike Chinese and Mexican labour for the SP over Cajun} - meanwhile, back at the camels... when the railway was done they had either escaped or were let loose and now live wild in the desert... bit of luck they don't breed as fast as bunnies or they'd have a real problem). New Zealand went for 3'6" gauge... so did a lot of South America... when it wasn't (Swiss engineered) metre gauge rack rail...
Most Eu countries used std gauge in its metric form but both Spain (Fascist) and Russia (Stalinist... after being Tsarist... not a lot of difference) chose weird gauges on the military theory that an invading army would not be able to use their tracks to advance on... neither seemed to realise that by using a wider gauge all the invading army would have to do was to re-gauge downwards/narrower on the same ties.
When the Germans retreated northwards in 1914 in what is now Namibia they pulled up their 60cm track. This helped the advancing Colonial forces from S Africa... they could stick down their 3'6" on the slightly narrow formation and run their trains straight through. Mind you, when the Germans arrived in Namibia they looked for a nice, easily graded place to put their railway to head from the coast inland... there it was... a nice dry river bed... only things left after the first flash floods were the locos... nice little double enders.
In 1944/45 the retreating German army would rip the track with a plough on one side of the double track and then blow a hole with explosives. they'd then do the other line for the same distance and blow a hole. Pity (for them) that standard British Army railway practice is to work Single Line Working on whatever line is there , regardless of what line or lines are there... we just used undamaged track to put in a wiggle repair and trundled happily on
One each of the USA built Baldwin 4-6-0T and Alco 2-6-2T that were built for the 14-18 Western Front are still running on the Ffestiniog Railway that Spooner engineered. (They've been repaired a couple of times). There's at least one 1940s vintage "Yankee Tank" 0-6-0T still active in this country... last one I saw was on The Kent and East Sussex Railway at Tenterden in Kent.
French and Belgian minor railways and tramways were inclined to metre gauge and a lot of their colonial main trackage was metre gauge. The French Decauville industrial (set of bits) system was 60cm. (I'm pretty sure that the gauge in Vietnam/French Indo-China was 1 metre).
In much of Africa you can tell where it was British Empire by the 3'6" gauge and some other Eu usurpers by the fact that it is metre gauge.
The Railways actually helped stop the slave trade... prior to the railways 99.9% of Europeans... the Portugese were the most common... couldn't go ashore even let alone inland because they had no natural immunity to the West african diseases which were largely transmitted by bugs fom the swamps. Therefore for slaves to arive at the coast there had to be black-on-black action... except where Arabs had taken over the scene. When the railways were pushed inland from the coast to exploit mineral wealth we could take in pumps to drain the swamps, kill the bugs, remove the diseases and stop the slave trade... pretty much in that order. If you look at the map of West Africa most of the countries are long narrow strips running in from the coast... along rivers in some ceases and along railway lines in most... The railways took armies in and supplied them and brought the minerals out.
nucat78 wrote: Surfstud31 wrote:The history channel said it comes from the distance between the wheels on a Roman chariot. I never heard such a thing and I couldn't believe it!Yeah, I saw that show on THC.
On THC!!!! YIKES!!!
Supposedly (according to a video I have anyway) the Colorado 3' gauge lines came about because one of the pioneer railroad construction engineers in Colorado was from Switzerland and was familiar with the meter-gauge trains in the Alps, and figured a narrower gauge would work in the Rockies too.
BTW speaking of horses - I do recall reading that for many years the British and Irish railways limited themselves to small two-axle freight cars (oops!! I mean "goods wagons") with a max loaded weight of 16 or 18 tons (I think??) because that was the heaviest load a horse could pull on a railway track. Into the 1940's-50's it was still common in rural areas to have a local business or even a small station that still did their 'shunting' with a horse.
As a longtime, regular viewer of THC, TLC and various PBS science shows, be assured that erroneous or misleading info, sometimes just plain nonesense, turns up on many of these shows on a regular basis. I'm afraid that in a great many instances, educational TV is far from it...in fact, it reminds of the degree of accuracy and reliability one often finds on the Internet! ;-))
CNJ831
wjstix wrote: Supposedly (according to a video I have anyway) the Colorado 3' gauge lines came about because one of the pioneer railroad construction engineers in Colorado was from Switzerland and was familiar with the meter-gauge trains in the Alps, and figured a narrower gauge would work in the Rockies too. BTW speaking of horses - I do recall reading that for many years the British and Irish railways limited themselves to small two-axle freight cars (oops!! I mean "goods wagons") with a max loaded weight of 16 or 18 tons (I think??) because that was the heaviest load a horse could pull on a railway track. Into the 1940's-50's it was still common in rural areas to have a local business or even a small station that still did their 'shunting' with a horse.
It wasn't just Britain and our erstwhile colony Ireland but most of Europe. Where as a small country person I have to enlarge my thinking for the US prairies and long haul you need to shrink your thinking for the european scene... all the way to the East border of Poland, Czekoslovakia and Hungary at least (plus the Balkans). We have higher population density and shorter distances. Until we messed up and put traffic onto our roads large tonnage and unit btrains didn't make any sense in most of Europe.
Historically you need to add to this that for the US as well as Europe draft animals provided most power to move anything up to 1940... with the trains picking up where horses, mules, oxen and donkeys left off. Even the USA was not an internal combustion engine economy until after 1945. probably the biggest shift to an IC economy came from all the redundent jeeps and army trucks... also the system had geared up to producing them... and both tyres that didn't puncture too easily and slip-paved concrete highways... there was also political momentum to inject cash into the system so that there wouldn't be another slump the same as after 1918/9.
You also need to realise that when any railway/RR invests in plant it does so to the size that it sees will pay at the time. This is why the British Loading Gauge - the first - is the smallest... the Eu/Berne Gauge comes next and then the US gauges... Russia and China go there own way... this is all in the "Standard gauges". Track... rail-to-rail gauge is not the only gauge to be considered.
Any increase in size... like from a 40' to a 50' standard box car is not just a matter of making bigger cars. the loading doors on trackside platforms fo warehouses have been built for 40'cars. Tracks are designed to take the heaviset cars of their time. No-one in the 1800s imagines that we would want to run mile long trains of 100ton coal cars... if you'd suggested it they'd have locked you up in the funny farm. It was a miracle that steel rails stretched out across the Prairies with steam engines running on them. Diesel didn't exist. Electric light was a miracle.
In Britain and Europe ... and America... we kept using horses because we knew horses, horses were available (we knew how to make new ones ourselves and didn't have to go and buy a new one) we could grow their fuel and they did the job in horse sized lumps which were sufficient.
Then we had WW2.
90% of the great Wehrmacht was horse drawn... or walked... that's why they couldn't keep their elite hydro-carbon powered forces supplied in Russia when the Soviets collapsed backwards scorching the earth as the Tsarist army had done when Napoleon invaded 150 or so years before. The 2nd World war in the West was won on a combination of fodder as well as oil... and the germans struck north toward the political capitals instead of going for the oil fields... History, and our lives, could have been so different.
We won in europe in part at least because the new internal combustion engine technology had come of age... and we had jeeps and a pipeline from the West Coast of England right across into Europe... the bit across the channel being laid in the first days after D Day... right on "Private Ryan's heals.
"Private ryan" rode a new technology as significant as the English long bow, the Samurai sword and the Atom bomb... the Jeep... massed produced vehicles that "anyone" could afford... and I'm not forgetting Henry Ford. Henry Ford produced a niche market. After WW2 production remained set up so that vehicles could be pumped out endlessly... they have changed our planet.
We have changed our planet.
PS post WW2 railways/RR are vulnerable to air power... they can't duck, dodge or hide.
Britain is the largest aircraft carrier the US has got... and it has easy B52 range all the way EAST to Japan. You have no other carrier that can take B52s.
CNJ831 wrote: nucat78 wrote: Surfstud31 wrote:The history channel said it comes from the distance between the wheels on a Roman chariot. I never heard such a thing and I couldn't believe it!Yeah, I saw that show on THC. As a longtime, regular viewer of THC, TLC and various PBS science shows, be assured that erroneous or misleading info, sometimes just plain nonesense, turns up on many of these shows on a regular basis. I'm afraid that in a great many instances, educational TV is far from it...in fact, it reminds of the degree of accuracy and reliability one often finds on the Internet! ;-))CNJ831
I suppose I should have clarified on my above post. I have also heard and seen where some of the THC programs are garbage. I can't recall specific examples, but remember seeing things on a couple of occasions that was not even close to true. You would be just as well off taking Wikipedia at face value.
Try looking into why we have 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour...
it goes way back beyond the Romans...
If you like this sort of stuff and can get the BBC on internet look for a bunch of programmes called "What the Romans did for us" and "What the Ancients did for us". It's amazing what was invented before Hollywood took over creating the world.
Dave-the-Train wrote: Surfstud31 wrote:The history channel said it comes from the distance between the wheels on a Roman chariot. I never heard such a thing and I couldn't believe it!Try looking into why we have 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour...it goes way back beyond the Romans...If you like this sort of stuff and can get the BBC on internet look for a bunch of programmes called "What the Romans did for us" and "What the Ancients did for us". It's amazing what was invented before Hollywood took over creating the world.
I will have to check and see if that programme airs on BBC America. Sounds interesting. Thanks for the info.
How did the US decide on standard gauge, which is the question here?
<> Early US RR history had many gauges. Obviously 4' 8 1/2 inches was used, but so was 3 foot and 2 foot and 5 foot and increments between. There were places on rail lines where there were triple gauge installations to help the transferring of goods and interchange.
But the multi-gauges were fallible and to help with the confusions, the lesser gauge lines regauged or had to go out of business, or were bought out and regauged.
<><>3 foot gauge is prolly the more successful of the lesser gauges as it was suited for mountaneous terrain . BTW the first long tunnel thru a mountain was 3 foot gauge.
<><><>Also some streetcar railways purposefully used a different gauge for city running to prevent the railroads from running freight down the streets, I think Pittsburgh is 5 foot gauge.
and yes, I believe the standard gauge reference did come all the way from roman times, well, the chariot wheels wore grooves into the paths they ran so, hey, run in the groove!!!
But I don't think even in Roman times there was a standard gauge at all as there were old mine works with their own crude rail hoppers, they were pushed, no locos then.
Its just after the turn into the 1800's and the US was new all kinds of technical development was growing so there was a big mix competeing, standard gauge won out.
dinwitty wrote:Also some streetcar railways purposefully used a different gauge for city running to prevent the railroads from running freight down the streets, I think Pittsburgh is 5 foot gauge.
Also some streetcar railways purposefully used a different gauge for city running to prevent the railroads from running freight down the streets, I think Pittsburgh is 5 foot gauge.