Road Gauge - Railway Gauge ?

[syrup]

Not sure where to put this but i thought it sounded most interesting.

Engineering History

Railroad tracks. 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 designed 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 had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

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 (including England ) for their legions.

Those 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. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is

derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder

'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)

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. The SRBs are 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, and 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 ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything...and CURRENT Horses Asses in government are controlling everything else.

[DaveH]

Not sure where to put this but i thought it sounded most interesting.

Engineering History

Railroad tracks. 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 spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions.

Those 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 4 foot 8 and a half standard railway gauge has frequently been referred to as the "roman standard charriot gauge"

[jiginc]

The 4 foot 8 and a half standard railway gauge has frequently been referred to as the "roman standard charriot gauge"

But then we had the broad gauge, well someone has to be different.

In Britain the Great Western Railway, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, pioneered broad gauge from 1838 with a gauge of (2,140 mm), and retained this gauge until 1892. A number of harbours also used railways of this gauge for construction and maintenance. These included Portland Harbour and Holyhead Breakwater, which used a locomotive for working sidings. As it was not connected to the national network, this broad gauge operation continued until the locomotive wore out in 1913.^[1]

It became apparent that standardization on a single gauge throughout a rail transport system was advantageous. Rolling stock did not need to match the gauge exactly; a difference of a few millimeters could be coped with, so that interoperability on systems with gauges only slightly different was possible.

While the parliament of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was initially prepared to authorise lines built to the broad gauge of 7 ft 0 ¹⁄₄ in (2,140 mm), it was eventually rejected by the Gauge Commission in favour of all railways in the British Isles being built to standard gauge of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in); based on the gauge with the highest route-mileage. Ireland, using the same criteria, was allocated a different standard gauge - Irish gauge. Broad gauge lines in Britain were gradually converted to dual gauge or standard gauge from 1864, and finally the last of Brunel's broad gauge was converted in 1892.

Information from Wikipedia.

Enyone know why 7 ft 0 ¹⁄₄

[DaveH]

But then we had the broad gauge, well someone has to be different.

In Britain the Great Western Railway, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, pioneered broad gauge from 1838 with a gauge of (2,140 mm), and retained this gauge until 1892. A number of harbours also used railways of this gauge for construction and maintenance. These included Portland Harbour and Holyhead Breakwater, which used a locomotive for working sidings. As it was not connected to the national network, this broad gauge operation continued until the locomotive wore out in 1913.^[1]

It became apparent that standardization on a single gauge throughout a rail transport system was advantageous. Rolling stock did not need to match the gauge exactly; a difference of a few millimeters could be coped with, so that interoperability on systems with gauges only slightly different was possible.

While the parliament of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was initially prepared to authorise lines built to the broad gauge of 7 ft 0 ¹⁄₄ in (2,140 mm), it was eventually rejected by the Gauge Commission in favour of all railways in the British Isles being built to standard gauge of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in); based on the gauge with the highest route-mileage. Ireland, using the same criteria, was allocated a different standard gauge - Irish gauge. Broad gauge lines in Britain were gradually converted to dual gauge or standard gauge from 1864, and finally the last of Brunel's broad gauge was converted in 1892.

Information from Wikipedia.

Enyone know why 7 ft 0 ¹⁄₄

In the silent film era the bad guy always tried to kill the "damsel in distress" by roping her to a railway line in front of an approaching express train. The hero would always come along, sort the bad guy out, stop the train with inches to spare and rescue the fair maiden.

I have a friend whose former wife (or wifette as Richard would say) was only 4 foot 6 inches tall, - so had he strapped her to the tracks the train could have passed straight over her without touching her, - but it could have severed the binding ropes holding her to the track thereby setting her free without the need for a hero!

There are not many women who are over 7 feet tall, so, had the World adopted Brunnel's broad gauge it would have ruined a load of silent films and made the idea of killing the damsel in this manner a non-starter in the first place.

[DaveH]

But then we had the broad gauge, well someone has to be different.

In Britain the Great Western Railway, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, pioneered broad gauge from 1838 with a gauge of (2,140 mm), and retained this gauge until 1892. A number of harbours also used railways of this gauge for construction and maintenance. These included Portland Harbour and Holyhead Breakwater, which used a locomotive for working sidings. As it was not connected to the national network, this broad gauge operation continued until the locomotive wore out in 1913.^[1]

It became apparent that standardization on a single gauge throughout a rail transport system was advantageous. Rolling stock did not need to match the gauge exactly; a difference of a few millimeters could be coped with, so that interoperability on systems with gauges only slightly different was possible.

While the parliament of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was initially prepared to authorise lines built to the broad gauge of 7 ft 0 ¹⁄₄ in (2,140 mm), it was eventually rejected by the Gauge Commission in favour of all railways in the British Isles being built to standard gauge of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in); based on the gauge with the highest route-mileage. Ireland, using the same criteria, was allocated a different standard gauge - Irish gauge. Broad gauge lines in Britain were gradually converted to dual gauge or standard gauge from 1864, and finally the last of Brunel's broad gauge was converted in 1892.

Information from Wikipedia.

Enyone know why 7 ft 0 ¹⁄₄

There used to be several jokes about the building of the Union Pacific Railway which crossed the USA east to west based on the fact that they started building from both ends and met up in the mid west of America. The jokes (none of them founded in truth) centred on this meeting with either the two halves not lining up or both halves being a different gauge.

However, when Australia built its rail network across the continent different areas used different teams of engineers (mostly from Britain) and they did use different gauges, using mainly standard (4ft 8.5"), Brunell's broad gauge (7ft) and a narrow gauge (3ft 6"). This lead to a situation that trains had to have wheels on sliding axles to fit multiple gauge track, and, at a junction of 2 gauges, had to proceed one pair of wheels at a time so they could be adjusted to the new track spacing. This was very slow and labourious and caused lots of delays. I seem to remember it being illustrated in one of Sheffield lad Michael Pallin's "Great Railway Journeys of the World" series.