[guide.chat] rail road

From: "harold kitching" <harold.kitching01@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "guide chat" <guide.chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Sivilla watson" <mrsvilla4@xxxxxxxxx>, "Keith Wines" <muckyduck2@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2012 11:30:00 +0100
          RAILROAD AND ADVANCED        

                      TECHNOLOGY

 

Description: cid:02F5736A-F3CA-43E4-B8D7-B26030A6760F

Railroad tracks.
The U.S. Standard railroad gauge 
(distance between 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 designed the 
U.S. 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.

Description: cid:9F6315A8-40CD-4824-9EA1-A2EE8ABD257F

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 ..

Description: cid:256DEBED-18C0-4EFD-BB91-025600B1FD9E

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.

Description: cid:2BDB8639-F17D-423D-B52E-866AF42AAF66

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. In 
other words, bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, 
or 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 ...

Description: cid:186C2769-E2A5-4A72-988D-CCDCD76DD722

Now, the twist to the story:
When 
you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice 
that 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.
Description: cid:67E63294-7DE0-442C-91C4-6129BE882AAA

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to 
make them a bit larger, 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.
Description: cid:7F84A3D1-372C-4148-B16C-7087608E5FD8

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!

Now you know, Horses' Asses control almost everything...

Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it?
[guide.chat] rail road

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