Subject:
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Re: Is this true?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Fri, 25 Feb 2000 21:10:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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940 times
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There is a more basic theory..
The 4'8 1/2" is measured to the inside edges of the rails. When the original
railways were pioneered in Britain using horse/gravity power and
correspondingly lighter section rail (40lb/foot) there is evidence to support
the theoty that a rounded five foot was the gauge - measured to the OUTSIDE of
the rails!
Of course, the far superior 7'0 1/4" gauge pioneered by I.K.Brunel in the
latter half of the nineteenth century showed far more forward thinking, just
think of the potential speeds & cargo capacity achievable. Do not fear,
reality will not be a hurdle if you model Lego trains, after all who is to
stop you creating a system based on a parallel universe which DID develop the
7' 0 1/4" gauge?
One other point (which my wife Sue cleverly noted) - two lego horses side by
side equal the distance between the rails (not taking into account
muscle/harness clearance). There must be a link between ancient Lego horses of
Rome and the more recent 4561!
(1) Roman chariots were 2 horse wide
(2) Citroen made a car that was called the "Deux Cheveaux" (two h.p.) which
was 4' 8 1/2" wide!
Blah blah.
Jon
In lugnet.trains, Matt Nourot writes:
> Hi all,
> I copied the following from an email sent to me by a freind, can anyone
> confirm or flame it?
>
> The U.S. 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 the 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. Why did 'they' use that gauge then?
> 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 Europe
> (and 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 and wag-ons, were first
> made by Roman war chari-ots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial
> Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
>
> Thus, we have the answer to the orig-inal 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 behind
> came up with it, you may be exactly right-because the Imperial Roman war
> chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war
> horses.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Is this true?
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| (...) Otherwise known as a 2 CV :), oh, btw, they are _not_ two horsepower, since a Cheveaux is more than one horsepower...another mecanical oddity for you brought to you by the French... James P (25 years ago, 25-Feb-00, to lugnet.trains)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Is this true?
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| Hi all, I copied the following from an email sent to me by a freind, can anyone confirm or flame it? The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? (...) (25 years ago, 25-Feb-00, to lugnet.trains)
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