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Railroad History
#1 · October 22, 1998, 1:48 pm
Posted by: tz8cy5 <tz8cy5@...>
Henry Norr quotes Nick Tredennick, who quotes a colleague (perhaps apocryphal) who once tried to find out why railroad
tracks in the US are always built to the gauge they are (something like four feet, three inches, if I remember correctly). He first
learned that the standard was implemented here because many of the original designers of the US railway system came from
Britain, where that gauge was already established.
tracks in the US are always built to the gauge they are (something like four feet, three inches, if I remember correctly). He first
learned that the standard was implemented here because many of the original designers of the US railway system came from
Britain, where that gauge was already established.
When he asked why it was the standard in Britain, he was told that it had long been used for the wheelbase of carriages. Why?
Because that's how far apart the ruts in the roads were, and any wagon based on a different design would soon lose its wheels
or crack its axle. And how had that pattern originated? Because the roads went back to Roman times, and Roman chariots were
built to the same standard. Why? It was just wide enough for the rear ends of two horses.