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)
Neutrino wrote: Oh no, not this again. (Offense intended.)
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.
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!
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
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.
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!
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.
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.