Design Principles

[pauln]

The U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

But why did they use that
gauge?

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
England were
built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been
used
ever since.

And the ruts?

The initial ruts, which everyone
else had to match
for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first made by Roman war
chariots. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome they
were
all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus we have the answer to the
original question.
The U.S. 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
*** came up with it, you may be exactly right. The Imperial Roman
war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of
two war horses.

Now here's a modern twist to the
story.
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.
Those
are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol
at their factory at 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 based on the width
of a horse's ***.

[JerolW]

Hee Hee Hee.

[oldtimer]

It could also be said that the Romans invented bureaucracy, or at least refined it ad absurdum.

[kaiser SET say]

And how again did Comicus and Swiftus enter the cabinet meeting....................................................BS, BS, BS, I think the Romans really did invent bureaucracy! (don't forget the "Walk this Way" part[])

[WMcD]

I think it goes back farther in time. I've seen one photo of a Mycenean "gate to the city." There are wear marks in the paving stones under the "arch" corresponding to wheel ruts. The gate was not quite an arch, of course.

My thought is that once craftsmen in the Egyptian times, or many centuries B.C.E., made a few carts, they made ruts in the roads. Then everyone had to make wheel spacing to that gauge. Otherwise the cart would be bouncing left and right as one wheel or the other dropped into one or the other rut.

In this fashion, the standard gauge was memorialized or established by existing roads which survived, and reinforced with ruts for millenia. No one had to write it down or even establish a unit of measure. Just go out to the ruts in the road and design wheel spacing accordingly.

However, there may have been an ancient standard of measure involved.

I was doing some armchair research in railroad gauge and sometime later, the ancient unit of the cubit. Yeah, the mind makes some oddball connections.

The cubit is generally thought to be the distance between a man's elbow and the tip of the middle finger. Of course, the most well recorded use in antiquity is Noah's ark.

Yes, you'd think there are so many variations in human dimensions that it is a standard of length with many variations. If you look it up, scholars put a range of present standard lengths to this definition. I.e., exactly how long is a cubit.

The odd thing that I realized is that the standard track fits with two cubits pretty well. This could be a master's thesis for someone.

Gil

[Islander]

Actually, the Chinese invented bureaucracy, around 200 BC, during the Qin Dynasty. Had to keep the Empire organized.

[Islander]

Now here's a modern twist to the story. 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. Those are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at 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 based on the width of a horse's ***.

Now here's a political twist to the story. The original plan was to have the SRBs manufactured in one of the eastern seaboard states and have them transported by ship to Cape Canaveral. They would have been wider and have been manufactured in one piece. However, the congressman from Utah lobbied successfully to have his state get the job.

The constraints of train transport required a re-design, resulting in boosters that had to be re-assembled after they arrived. The joints were sealed with O-rings. You may recall that a failed O-ring was the cause of the Challenger disaster. The O-rings performed adequately in ideal conditions, but the weather was colder than usual for that launch. During takeoff, one of the cold O-rings failed to seal properly, allowing the fuel to leak out and causing an explosion that killed all seven astronauts.

Some horse's *** set that whole process in motion...

[pauln]

Now here's a modern twist to the story. 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. Those are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at 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 based on the width of a horse's ***.

Now here's a political twist to the story. The original plan was to have the SRBs manufactured in one of the eastern seaboard states and have them transported by ship to Cape Canaveral. They would have been wider and have been manufactured in one piece. However, the congressman from Utah lobbied successfully to have his state get the job.

The constraints of train transport required a re-design, resulting in boosters that had to be re-assembled after they arrived. The joints were sealed with O-rings. You may recall that a failed O-ring was the cause of the Challenger disaster. The O-rings performed adequately in ideal conditions, but the weather was colder than usual for that launch. During takeoff, one of the cold O-rings failed to seal properly, allowing the fuel to leak out and causing an explosion that killed all seven astronauts.

Some horse's *** set that whole process in motion...

I am aware... I worked at the Johnson Space Center for ten years... I could tell stories that would send a chill up your spine!!!

[oldtimer]

Actually, the Chinese invented bureaucracy, around 200 BC, during the Qin Dynasty. Had to keep the Empire organized.

But only the Romans could refine it ad absurdum......

[Islander]

Now here's a modern twist to the story. 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. Those are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at 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 based on the width of a horse's ***.

Now here's a political twist to the story. The original plan was to have the SRBs manufactured in one of the eastern seaboard states and have them transported by ship to Cape Canaveral. They would have been wider and have been manufactured in one piece. However, the congressman from Utah lobbied successfully to have his state get the job.

The constraints of train transport required a re-design, resulting in boosters that had to be re-assembled after they arrived. The joints were sealed with O-rings. You may recall that a failed O-ring was the cause of the Challenger disaster. The O-rings performed adequately in ideal conditions, but the weather was colder than usual for that launch. During takeoff, one of the cold O-rings failed to seal properly, allowing the fuel to leak out and causing an explosion that killed all seven astronauts.

Some horse's *** set that whole process in motion...

I am aware... I worked at the Johnson Space Center for ten years... I could tell stories that would send a chill up your spine!!!

So often, expediency trumps safety. I worked for twelve years at CN Rail. The mark of a "good" foreman was his "willingness to take a chance". With that mindset, I wasn't at all surprised they had so many derailments. Of course, when a rocket fails, it's way more spectacular, but there's often loss of life in both cases and it's often avoidable in both cases.

I was glad to leave there to work somewhere that things were expected to be done right the first time and opportunities for staff members to upgrade their skills were sought out and provided.

[Andy W]

My brother-in-law's father was a rocket scientist (now deceased) at the place in Utah that made the rocket boosters for the Challenger.

They called NASA the morning of the launch and told them to postpone the launch; it was too cold and they were afraid the o-rings might leak.

True story.