The historical significance of ... a horse's behind

[Arlo]

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?

Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

So, 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 same 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 more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, 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 what about the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk 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......

(As posted by Ronnie Sexton on the American Chuck Wagon Association site.)

[AVGWarhawk]

The subject of this thread led me to believe it was about Biden.

[Arlo]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

The subject of this thread led me to believe it was about Biden.

The subject of the thread was apolitical (as you found out upon reading it, hopefully) and it would be appreciated if you could resist dragging your political bias into it (so as you could avoid your own potential correlation).

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Arlo

The subject of the thread was apolitical (as you found out upon reading it, hopefully) and it would be appreciated if you could resist dragging your political bias into it (so as you could avoid your own potential correlation).

Lighten up, Francis.

[Arlo]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Lighten up, Francis.

Thank you for maturely understanding.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Arlo

Thank you for maturely understanding.

My pleasure.

[Skybird]

Some racing site some years ago had something similiar about why NASCAR loves to race in ovals, and why it is located in the US, the oval racing thing I mean. It stems from the times of horse racing, too.

[tmccarthy]

That is cool and interesting. It doesn't seem like that long ago I learned why the US and other parts of the world switched to right side driving.

(Why Americans and Brits Drive on Different Sides of the Road Claire Gillespie https://www.rd.com/article/why-drive...s-of-the-road/)

"Things changed in the late 1700s when large wagons pulled by several pairs of horses were used to transport farm products in France and the United States. In the absence of a driver’s seat inside the wagon, the driver sat on the rear left horse, with his right arm free to use his whip to keep the horses moving. Since he was sitting on the left, he wanted other wagons to pass on his left, so he kept to the right side of the road."

I assumed the British didn't use large teams of horses as much and didn't need to change but just now learned it may have been more about keeping tradition.

"The British Government refused to give up their left-hand driving ways, and in 1773 introduced the General Highways Act..."

[Otto Harkaman]

[Reece]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

The subject of this thread led me to believe it was about Biden.

[mapuc]

It also made me remember an episode of WWII in colour

In this episode they told us about the railway and how Germany had to build own railway in Russia because the Russian rail track was different than the Germans

Markus