Monday, Railroad question

The width of a Roman chariot (two horse butts)

Re: Monday, Railroad question

All locomotive wheels are 4'8" across. It only made sense to lay the rails that wide lest the trains always be derailing! ;-)

Tommy

Re: Monday, Railroad answer , sort of

I started out thinking about railroad ties and couldn�t find anything for a good trivia question so I went to steel rails. Tim is at least partly correct, and of course, Tommy gets the chicken or egg award for the day. As for the answer after the research I�m not certain but here are several theories from all over and you can pick.

Actually the gauge is today 4 feet 8 � inches. While it is true that there was some study done by Walter Evans in the 1870�s who measured the distance between chariot wheel ruts, and he found them to be 4 feet 9 inches on center (later confirmed to be the Roman standard gauge), there is an argument put forward by British rail historian Charles Lee that says it was based on horsepower, literally! In a rolling situation anything less would have underutilized the horse and over would have caused excessive strain (those Brits can make a math/energy study of anything). Others have variously said that the gauge was designed so that a car could hold two butts (but human ones) on either side of a passable aisle (with a little overhang of course). Others say that composite human size and reach carrying a stack of packages made the 4�8� dimension one that was workable. (Don�t ask me the theory behind that one.). The more likely idea for modern rail was that it fit the English mine tramways of the 1820�s, and that could have been part Roman and part horsepower. For certain that gauge was used on the Liverpool to Manchester railway which was the first major run between major cities. Later it was enlarged to 4 feet 8 1/2 (near 143cm) inches to accommodate a larger wheel flange. By 1840 4 feet 8 � inches was standard in Britain. In America the gauge was pretty certainly derived from British recollection but in U.S. measurement five foot center to center on the rail and since the gauge is taken from the distance from inside rail to inside rail it works out fine for 56 and � inches. Early on each American railroad had their own gauge in order to cause the transfer of cargo to their own lines over long distances, but eventually it evolved to standard, and narrow gauge (anything less than 4 feet 8 � inches, but most often 3 feet 6 inches�used in mountains and other difficult geology) railroads which are still in use today.