Some Choices Are Hard To Change
Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English people build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railway 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 use that odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts. So who built these old rutted roads?
The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derived from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two warhorses.
Now here's an interesting twist. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank.
The engineers who designed the rockets might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but they had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line to the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains, and the rockets had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was ultimately dictated by the width of the backside of a Roman warhorse.
Despite my best efforts, I haven't been able to validate this chronology I found in Power Engineering magazine. It hardly seerms that it could be completely true, but it still makes a fascinating story with many positive applications.
Once made, some decisions defy change. Before committing ourselves to some pursuit or direction in life, two questions can help us make better choices: What value will this have in five years, and what value will it have in eternity?
Some choices carry consequences that last a lifetime... and even well beyond. They deserve careful thought.
Copyright 2000 James McAlister
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