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 Washington
are controlling everything else!
