This is a little off topic but I just had an email sent to me and thought I would pass it along since it had to do with railroads. Can't swear to the validity but it is an interesting read.

Butch

--------------------

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 built 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 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 (and England ) for their legions. The 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.

I've heard this is actually a myth. Anyone know for sure? It's a great read nonetheless. The version I read referred to two horses ahhhh ..... well you get it .... at the end.

Butch,

Are you sure it isn't some sinister plot by the Proto 48ers?

SW

quote:

Originally posted by Old Goat:
The height of Napoleon I?

As a for selling (giving?) the Louisiana Territory to the U.S.?

Matt

I didn't think Napoleon was that tall!

Seriously, it's a bogus story, according to TruthOrFiction.com. See link below:

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/r/railwidth.htm

It is indeed a nice, but bogus story which pops up in the forum every couple of years.

As the Romans didn't use War Chariots, that part is quite fictional.

However, they did standardize wagon sizes so that the tended to be 5 Roman feet wide. After the fall of Rome, artisans simply continued to make them "the way they always had" for the next thousand years. As early British railroads were developed from these wagons, this, by sheer inertia, was the width of the rolling stock.

Since the early American railroads purchased many of their first engines from Britain, this was the size they got. But it was not universally accepted, there were many gauges in use during the early years ranging both smaller and larger. It was the decision to use 4' 8.5" for the Transcontinental RR that pushed everone in that direction once and for all.

To add fuel to this already smoldering fire...

The 4'-8½" gauge became the defacto standard for U.S. railroads during the Lincoln Administration. Seems that the two companies building the transcontinental railroad could not agree on what gauge the route from Kansas City to the Pacific Ocean would be. Both lobbied the government heavily for their position. At that time, as has been pointed out, there were a number of different gauges in use East of the Mississippi. I do not recall why, but President Lincoln sided with those advocating the 4'-8½" gauge, and enacted an executive order stating all railroads nationwide would conform to that standard.

There is a section of a chapter in the excellent Stephen Ambrose book: Nothing Like It In the World devoted to this topic.

Erie started out with 6' gauge. Talk about a 'broad way'! Of course they had an easier job of running larger locomotives when the 'conformed'.

Too bad the government didn't choose 5' gauge. Then our two-rail O-scale track would be scale.

Paul S

Well, this forum is always a fountain of information and we cut to the chase pretty darn quick on this one. The true story is almost as interesting as the bogus yarn just not quite as colorful. Thanks all!

Butch

I thought that the south was mainly 5' gauge and the North was mainly 4' 8 1/2" gauge. I have two Proto 48 locos. The General and the Texas. They originally ran on 5' gauge.

Let's start a NEW urban legend about standard gauge.

Here you go.

Engineers (slide-rule as opposed to railroad) laid out tracks using 5-foot centerlines for the rail positions.

The railhead, being 3 1/2" wide each yielded a 4' 8 1/2" gauge between the rails.

The railroads had the foresight to know that the track crews were not staffed by slide-rule toting engineers, so they made sure that the track guages were 4' 8 1/2" and made no reference to those slide-rule engineers.


What say ye?

I've written about this gauge topic before. It may be in another list here. If you put my name in the search block, you might come up with the post where I mentioned the source of my track gauge information. It was from a book puiblished in the late 19th century about railway history and development.

When railroads were first built in England and also in the US using horses for motive power, they started with rails usually made of cast iron, that were set in masonry blocks. It was expensive to lay such track but investors then wanted it to last.

Flanges of car wheels originally ran OUTSIDE the rails, which were gauged at 60", or 5' wide over the outside edges. Sometimes you might see an old painting showing railway wheels that way. It was not an artist's mistake. That is how it was done, even with the earliest steam power of the 1830's.

In England as well as on the early B&O, they tested running cars with their wheel flanges INSIDE the rails, the heads of which were about 1 3/4" wide at the time. Back then a load of 10 tons per car was considered quite heavy. So while such rail seems ridculously narrow today, it was heavy stuff in the 1830's.

It was found that it took less power to pull cars, especially on curves, when the flanges ran inside the rails. That inside measurement was 57 1/2" or, 4' 8 1/2". (Odd, but most motor vehicles have a similar track width, within a few inches of that). In England, this 'standard' track gauge in most built-up areas had been made a point of law, which early railroads were required to follow if they were to secure a right of way.

And too, it was easier and cheaper to reverse the wheels and tires on rail cars and early locomotives than it was to have the masons go out and reset all those heavy blocks and the rails to another gauge.

That "English standard" gauge came to the USA because our early steam locomotives, some track and other equipment (as well as investment financing) was imported from England - for better or worse - until we figured out how to do for ourselves. One such person was a jeweler in Philadelphia by the name of Matthias Baldwin. After he built his first steam locomotive, he vowed it would be his last. But it wasn't.

Wooden ties and wood rails with strap iron on top came a little later in the USA, when the push was on to build a railroad as cheaply as possible and squeeze as much profit out of it as possible for the investors. This is when the danger of riding on a train became reality for many poeple. And with it also came a plethora of gauges in the USA.

Most of the time the track gauge was legislated into the frachise to build operate a railroad. Making the gauges different was supposed to provide work for people where different lines met, unoloading cars from one line to reload into cars of another. Such was not a suitable set up for maximizing a railway's inherent efficiency. Australia is finally coming out of that, rebuilding a number of its long railway lines to the 'English standard' gauge from their previously narrower track.

Gauges listed in early US Official Guides ran from 4' 8 1/2" to 4' 10" and all were considered to be 'standard.' A few cars, like Lincoln's four-truck private car that he never rode in when alive, was orignally equipped with extra-wide tires so it could also pass over 5' gauge lines without changing the wheels.

Not to be outdone, that is also how they re-fitted those Russian decapods
to "standard gauge," from being built to the 5' gauge used in Russia.
Consider also that the USA had no standards of measurement then either. An inch could vary as much as 1/32" more or less. Not good enough for precision machine work in this nation as it stepped off its agricultural base in the early 1800's.

Lincoln did favor the 5' gauge for the new trans-continental railroad as being sensible. He had been an attorney for the Illinois Central railroad and was no stranger to how railroads were built and run. He was also aware that the 5' gauge was the railway standard in our Southern states. But north-eastern investors had their say and got their way.

Now: While just about all other industrial and non-industrial nations of the world use the metric system, why do we in the USA still use that ancient and ocmplicated measure set forth by some English king's thumb joint, foot and arm length?

Congress was to consider adopting the Metric System as the US standard in the early 1850's. However the late unpleasantness between the North and the South got in the way.

Ed Bommer

Well, you have to realize the Rebs were not going to pay much attention to Mr. Lincoln. That is why the North had to rebuild every mile of rail road they captured from the South.
Al

Thanks Ed. Makes a lot of sense. Of course, in the absence of facts, urban legends can be entertaining.

quote:

why do we in the USA still use that ancient and ocmplicated measure set forth by some English king's thumb joint, foot and arm length?

Because the units are better matched to their purpose. They are people relative instead of scientific relative. Metric system was designed to simplify the math not the mechanics of measuring, the traditional system was designed by workmen actually using the units.

And, then there's PA Broad gauge 5' 2 1/4" that trolleys ran on and PA logging gauge of 42"...

quote:

Originally posted by GG-1 4877:
Erie started out with 6' gauge. Talk about a 'broad way'! Of course they had an easier job of running larger locomotives when the 'conformed'.

The Lackawanna ran 6' gauge early on too, didn't it?

quote:

It was found that it took less power to pull cars, especially on curves, when the flanges ran inside the rails. That inside measurement was 57 1/2" or, 4' 8 1/2".

I believe that would be 56-1/2".

4ft 8.5 inch is not just an american std but it is the WORLD standard gauge.
any gauge bigger, e.g., 5 ft is called a broad gauge. any smaller is
called a narrow ga., e.g., 3 ft ga. track is considered a narrow ga.
French and Germans as well as British and et. al. use the standard gauge.

so, our 'standard' 0 gauge of 1.25 inch for 1/48th (or 1/4 inch to a ft)
represents a russian 5 ft ga (unamerican!!!). for 1/48th ACCURATE 0
scale of 4ft 8.5 inch WORLD STANDARD gauge would actually should be:

56.5/48 = 1.177 inch

and not 1.250 inch. the more accurate Proto:48 scale track should be
1.177 inch gauge. I've hand layed in this accurate gauge track using
individual ties, switch plates, bolted joiners, casted bolted frogs,
casted fish plates, etc. from Right-O-Way. i also used real steel rather
than the yellowish/greyish nickle silver. the steel would give blue shine
at the rail head as in the prototype.

i wish americans are not too colliqual (can't spill) and so closed minded.