Re: [DL] Now I need plot help too! (OT!)

["Leybourne, Brian" <Brian.Leybourne@airnz.co.nz>]

> Wagon trails, wagon trails, wagon trails.
> 
> Early trains were based on the width of wagons.
> 
> Wagons form ruts in the road, so it becomes easier for other wagons to
> follow them (wagons developed from the traditional axle width of
> horse-drawn carts).
> 
> So even a steam wagon would have the standard axle width, and 
> could follow wagon trails thru the mountains.

Thought you might find this interesting... (OT admittedly, but interesting
and related to your message)

> How space shuttles got that way or why engineering is an 
> exact science.
> 
> The US 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 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? The initial ruts, which everyone 
> else had to
> match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first 
> formed by Roman
> war chariots. 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. 
> 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, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were 
> made just wide
> enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, 
> we have the
> answer to the original question. 
> 
> Now the twist to the story..............
> 
> There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad 
> gauges and
> horse's behinds. 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 fatter, 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. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The 
> tunnel is slightly
> wider than the railroad track, and 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 the width of a Horse's Ass!

Brian "You will now be returned to your regular On-Topic conversations"
Leybourne.

.-->
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Brian Leybourne
brian.leybourne@airnz.co.nz
bleybourne@hotmail.com