RR Gauges 

Here is a look into the corporate mind that is 

very interesting, 

educational, historical, completely true, 

and hysterical all at the 

same time: 

The US standard railroad gauge 

(width between the two 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 the US railroads 

were built by English expatriates. 

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 used for building wagons 

which used that wheel spacing. 

Okay! 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? 

 The first long distance roads 

in Europe (and England) were built by

Imperial Rome for their legions. 

The roads have been used ever since. 

 
And the ruts in the roads? 

Roman war chariots 

first formed the initial ruts, 

which everyone else had to match 

for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. 

Since the chariots were made 

for (or by) Imperial Rome, 

they were all alike 

in the matter of wheel spacing. 

The United States standard 

railroad gauge  of 4 feet, 8.5 inches 

derives from the original specification 

for an Imperial Roman war chariot. 

Specifications and bureaucracies 

live forever. 

So the next time you are handed 

a specification and wonder what 

horse's ass came up with it, 

you may be exactly right, 

because the 

Imperial Roman war chariots 

were made just wide enough to 

accommodate 

the back ends of two war horses. 

Thus, we have 

the answer to the original question. 

Now the twist to the story.............. 

 There's an interesting extension 

to the story about railroad gauges 

and horses' behinds. 

When we 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 

might 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 

had to run through a tunnel 

in the mountains. 

The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. 

The tunnel is 

slightly wider than the railroad track, 

and the railroad track 

is about as wide as two horses' behinds. 

 
So, the major 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! 

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