esngblog

From FaceBook (and a lot of other places).

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?

Well, because that’s the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

So, 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 same 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 more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, 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 what about the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk 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. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/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. (Two horses’ asses.)
Now, the twist to the story:

When you 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 would 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 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? Ancient horse’s asses control almost everything……

I’m not sure this is so true today.  From NGF,,,,

Below I have a quote from a book I’m reading called Trains Unlimited by Tim Fischer which in turn is a quote from the UK Financial Times from 2004. A good point is made and you Britons should take heart from this notion. According to Fischer, Australia mostly follows the British tradition in these matters so we should be gladdened too.

It was later pointed out that….

So far as I can tell most Swiss trains aren’t particularly fast and have plenty of recovery time built into the timetable – that’s how you get things to run on time. I’m pretty sure that British trains have become more punctual in recent years due to increased recovery times – i.e. the timings have become more easily achieved and are less aspirational. My experience of commuting around the West Midlands a few years back was that the service was generally very good. When there was disruption it was often unavoidable.

And…

Last time I was in Switzerland, about 5 years ago now, the service was pretty poor. Lots of delays on SBB, seemingly inexplicably. Certainly didn’t meet the stereotype!

I think our railways are generally pretty good. Like Chris, I find that delays are often wholly unavoidable. We have a very old network, running close to capacity, so the domino effect when anything goes wrong is pronounced.

To say nothing of….

This reminds me of the old Cold War-era joke that the US military was going to mount it’s nuclear arsenal on the back of Amtrak trains…and then leak the timetable to the Soviets.

Spotted in Earlwood, next to the Tonbridge line….

And a few minutes later, the train drifting into Redhill….

Paul posted on Facebook this picture of Liverpool Street station in the 1920’s.  What a gloomy barn of a station!  But a few years earlier, it would have been full of lovely royal blue locos, including the Claude Hamilton 4-4-0’s.  In the 1920’s the coaches would still have been teak, but the locos repainted in a pleasant, but not as attractive, LNER green.

A selection of photos of the Brighton 4-6-2 tanks.  There were just the two of them, one with Stephenson’s valve gear and one with Walschaerts. 

Not quite as elegant as the slightly larger L class Baltic 4-6-4 tanks – the L class had a certain symmetry due to the wheel arrangement.   But they didn’t have the stability problems of the Baltics, that were rebuilt into 4-6-0 tender locomotives, and hence were longer lasting.  One survived just long enough to receive ‘British Railways’ on the tank side and the number 32325 – both on the bunker sides and back, but all in Bulleid malachite green and ‘sunshine’ lettering.  The loco ended its days on the Oxted line before withdrawal in 1951.

Yet another locomotive that I’d love to have a model of….  (Unsure of photo sources.)