Why 4ft 81/2"??!!

[podge]

This is quite long but read it right to the end!!!.........
The US standard railroad gauge (the 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 built 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 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 (and England ) for their legions. The 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 bottom came up with it?' you may be exactly right.
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the
rear ends of two war horses (or two horses' bottoms.) 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 - which is arguably the world's
most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years
ago by the width of a horse's bottom!!!!!!.

Tried to keep it clean!!

[tourerfogey]

For some reason, of which I'm not too sure, I just read all of that....

[Simon]

I too read it, so you're not alone

podge: Made it even cleaner for you

[Kiwirover]

Amazing… so did I.
Makes you wonder what else is derived from a horse’s bottom

[GERFIX]

Originally Posted by Kiwirover

Amazing… so did I.
Makes you wonder what else is derived from a horse’s bottom

Roses? Think about it.

[podge]

Oh Dear....Oh Dear...what have I started here..So apart from Roses what have horses bottoms done for us!!!!!!!!
SORRY Mods..just could not resist that!!P.

[majedm75]

In my mother country, we have a saying:

It's always the Italians fault... (or slightly modified: blame the Italians)

[desperado]

strangly facinating (if true) thanks

[Pilch]

Originally Posted by desperado

strangly facinating (if true) thanks

GERFIX, and rhubarb?

[moonstoneboy]

AH, but Gods Wonderful Railway used 7 feet which would have enabled better more comfortable trains had there not been pressure to adopt the standard gauge.