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http://www.milepost235.com/
- http://atsf.railfan.net/
http://www.ATSFRR.com/ - http://www.McMillanPubns.com./
- http://www.altamontpress.com/
http://www.augustweb.com/~marcc/
- http://www.trainpix.com/atsf/
- http://www.logantele.com/~jcampbel/atsf-a.htm
http://ok.railfan.net/fp45.html
- http://www.dnaco.net/~gelwood/other/atsf.html
- http://www.sbrhs.org/3751history.htm
http://all-railroads.com/histsoc.html
- http://homepages.go.com/~doghead00/atsf/atsf.htm
http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/links/linkj.html
Humor...
Why is the railroads' standard gauge
rail width is 4 feet 8.5 inches?
The US standard railroad gauge (width
between the two rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches.
That's an 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. Why
was the chariot designed to be 4 feet
8.5 inches? To accommodate the rear
ends of the two horses that pulled it.
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.
Thus, we have the answer to the
original question.
Now the twist to the story....
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 wider, 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 and the SRBs had to fit
through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly
wider than the railroad track, and,
you guessed it, 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 a couple
of horses' asses.
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