Railroad tracks (read to the end)

[$parechange]

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.



The next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process

and wonder 'What horse's a$$

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' butts.)

Now - the twist to the story:
A Space Shuttle sitting on its

launch pad has 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 a factory in Utah .

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 a$$!

AND YOU THOUGHT BEING a horse's a$$ wasn't important!


Ancient horse's asses control

almost everything.

CURRENT Horses Asses in

Washington are controlling

everything else.
Remember to Vote in November.