From: Che DeBarna
Message: 8941
Date: 2001-09-01
Funny guy!
But sometimes reality is funnier than joke... do you know why Spanish railroads are wider than the European ones? Because a genious-general had the great idea that if they made those railroads so wide, Frenches wouldn't have enough guts to invade the peninsule (once more) as they couldn't supply a hipothetic modern occupation army by train. Today, we have to change train any time we try to go across the Pyrenees... (well, you can go get the TALGO and pay for such a "comfort"). Fortunately, soon my city will be linked with the civilisated world with a TGV with regular wide!
>From: jpisc98357@... >Reply-To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com >To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com >Subject: [tied] Re: [tied Change is not Universal. >Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2001 13:35:26 EDT > >Dear friends, > > This little historical story should put some of the discussions of late >into some perspective: Standards & Specs! There's A Reason For It! > > 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 the US railroads were built by >English expatriates. > > Why did the English people 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 use that odd wheel >spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break >on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the >old wheel ruts. > > OK, so who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in >Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The same >roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which >everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first >made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for and by Imperial >Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. > > Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United State >standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original >specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. > > So you see, Specs and Bureaucracies live forever... And the next time you >are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you >may be closer to the truth than you realize.... Because the Imperial Roman >chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two >war horses! > >Best regards, John Piscopo >http://www.johnpiscoposwords.com >PO Box 137 >Western Springs, IL 60558-0137 >(708)246-7111