Friday, September 18, 2015

Fun Facts From Professor Woodsterman


Fascinating Stuff . . .
 Railroad Tracks

The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (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 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.
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.
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.

 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.

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.

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?


Thanks David

14 comments:

  1. Good stuff, Odie. Engineering done centuries before is everywhere in Europe, where narrow winding roads that change names every 200 yards (or meters, excuse me) were ox paths a thousand years earlier, and now have cobblestone on them.

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  2. I knew that about the train tracks, but I never heard that about the shuttle. Couldn't they have found a different way to transport the shuttle? Some horses ass should have been able to solve that problem.

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  3. Well, you came through, once again, with some amazing facts. I wish we could get rid of the horses' a** in DC!

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  4. There are a lot of horses asses in D.C., too many in fact.

    I always love your history lessons.

    Have a fabulous day and weekend Odie. ☺

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  5. This is just too cool. And pictures, too. Thank you!!!

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  6. Sandee, I love that, "My history lessons".

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  7. Trailbee, That's one thing I learned, many moon ago, use pictures every chance you get. You should see some of the crazy google image searches I do.

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Put it here ... I can't wait to read it. I have the Captcha turned OFF but blogger insists it be there. You should be able to bypass it.

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