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THIS IS VERY INTERESTING


 



 

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 English expatriates designed the US railroads.


 

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 had used for building wagons, which used that 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 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? Imperial  Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.


 

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear 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... and
CURRENT horses asses in Washington are controlling everything else.
   

 


 


 

 

one for ktj

Hehehe....yeah, that one has been around for a while.

The bit about Roman chariots is true though.

However, more railway line with a gauge of three-foot-six-inches (1067mm) was built throughout the world than any other gauge (the same gauge as used in NZ). But over the decades, a large percentage of 3' 6" track has been converted to 4' 8½" track so that is now the most numerous gauge. Another popular gauge, particularly throughout Asia is metre-gauge. And the Irish just had to be different....they adopted five-foot-three-inches for their railway track gauge.

But the most bizzare has to be Oz (just across the Ditch)....they definitely couldn't get their shit together. NSW Railways adopted 4' 8½", as did the Commonwealth Railways (who operated the trans-continental line from Port Augusta in South Australia to Karlgoolie in Western Australia). Victoria and South Australia (the state rail systems) adopted the Irish gauge of 5' 3". And Queensland State Railways, Tasmania State Railways and Western Australia State Railways adopted 3' 6", as did Commonwealth Railways for their line from Port Augusta to Alice Springs. Confused? It all turned into a huge fuck-up that the Aussies have spent the past six-or-so decades trying to fix. Although most of the main routes throughout Oz are now 4' 8½", the other gauges are still used extensively thoughout Australia, meaning it is still a huge fuck-up.

they tried fixing it with standard gauge so many of the main trunk lines have/had three rails. I can remember in the old days one had to change trains in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere at places like casino and murraybridge. The luggage was lucky to make it on the same train, sometime turning up several states away many months later if at all. The railway food was abyssimal and the coffee and tea stewed and never enough time to drink it.

A 1941 advertisement for General Motors locomotives....


(http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo227/Kiwithrottlejockey/CZ/1941_GeneralMotorsLocomotives_zpsfd71383b.jpg~original)

90 mph!!! Not bad for an old girl built back during the 1930s....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJkfaHAhEQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJkfaHAhEQ)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me1OfEEKk3I (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me1OfEEKk3I)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ5CIlPbzl8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ5CIlPbzl8)

• Union Pacific Railroad Acquires Big Boy Locomotive No.4014 (http://www.uprr.com/newsinfo/releases/heritage_and_steam/2013/0723_4014.shtml)

        Railroad Plans to Restore One of the Largest Steam Locomotives Ever Built


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWpPeugUI44 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWpPeugUI44)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi7Jac3htts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi7Jac3htts)

Do I smell a touch of micromanagement?
Wonder if more than driver is involved,
and wtf is measuring wheels about?

http://www.3news.co.nz/Spanish-train-driver-was-on-phone/tabid/417/articleID/306965/Default.aspx?src=eletter

Here are a couple of interesting video clips from the Union Pacific Railroad as they prepare Big Boy locomotive No.4014 for the long tow from the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds to the Union Pacific workshops at Cheyenne, Wyoming....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmTr22rvldk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmTr22rvldk)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhAFMuMRyxU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhAFMuMRyxU)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wPCrzYis4g (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wPCrzYis4g)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV0HELqgu0E (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV0HELqgu0E)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wiKxPptCDI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wiKxPptCDI)

kept hearing steam whistles nearby and wondered and went looking.
 Found their home, soon to be NOT as being soon evicted to make way for new Parnell station...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201223822772292&set=pcb.10201223849932971&type=1&theater (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201223822772292&set=pcb.10201223849932971&type=1&theater)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201223825092350&set=pcb.10201223849932971&type=1&theater (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201223825092350&set=pcb.10201223849932971&type=1&theater)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201223832692540&set=pcb.10201223849932971&type=1&theater (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201223832692540&set=pcb.10201223849932971&type=1&theater)

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<div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=684024261652046" data-width="466"><div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore">Post (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=684024261652046) by Joselete Dorado López (https://www.facebook.com/JOSELETE1959).</div></div>


https://www.facebook.com/JOSELETE1959 (https://www.facebook.com/JOSELETE1959)

 www.tracksafe.co.nz/railsafety_game/index.html (http://www.tracksafe.co.nz/railsafety_game/index.html)

http://trainfanatics.com/introducing-j-611-powerful-4-8-4-ever-built/ (http://trainfanatics.com/introducing-j-611-powerful-4-8-4-ever-built/)

Following a nine-month-long restoration, former Norfolk & Western Railway J-class 4-8-4 locomotive no.611 is again alive and roaming the rails under her own power.

The fourteen Norfolk & Western J-class were the most powerful 4-8-4 steam locomotives ever built. Capable of developing more than 5,100 horsepower at the drawbar and able to haul 1,000 ton passenger trains at up to 110 mph (one of the J-class locomotives actually achieved that speed with a 1,025 ton load during a test run in 1948), they were designed for hauling express trains between Norfolk, Virginia and Cincinnati, Ohio across the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia. Fourteen of them were built, and the last one, J611, was retired to a museum in Roanoke, Virginia in 1959. In the 1980s, J611 was restored and spent a decade hauling excursion trains on the rails of the Norfolk Southern Railway before once again being retired to the Virginia Museum of Transportation at Roanoke. And now the beast is operational again following a multi-million-dollar overhaul over the past several months in a joint project between the museum and Norfolk Southern Railway.

Here is a photograph taken during the first main-line test run last month. On the last day of May, the locomotive began hauling paying passengers again during its return trip to Roanoake where it will be based.

(http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo227/Kiwithrottlejockey/Rail%20Pix/531654_21May2015_zpska6vbm3w.jpg~original)

To view two video clips taken during the main-line test run, click HERE (http://www.wxii12.com/news/web-extra-steam-engine-returns-after-20-year-retirement/33148610) and HERE (https://www.facebook.com/nctrans/videos/10152663195506653).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZaNa9rlclU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZaNa9rlclU)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1uun1PEbGc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1uun1PEbGc)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7DmZLu35hc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7DmZLu35hc)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aioi5D7__5c (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aioi5D7__5c)

On 30th May, the return of J611 to her home at Roanoke, Virginia where she was built in 1950 and where the locomotive will be based...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfAG7Un171k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfAG7Un171k)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWrVPBFHmOY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWrVPBFHmOY)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4XdgTMNWE8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4XdgTMNWE8)