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GREAT story but go to the following link for a
rebuttal:
<A
href="">http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/railwidth.htm
Harry
<BLOCKQUOTE
>
----- Original Message -----
<DIV
>From:
ira
To: <A title=realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
href="">REAL TRADERS
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 2:38
PM
Subject: [RT] A weekend thought
<FONT face="Times New Roman" color=#0000ff
size=3>Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any
bells...?<FONT lang=0 face=Arial
color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"> <FONT lang=0
face="Times New Roman" color=#0000ff size=3
FAMILY="SERIF">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.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.<FONT lang=0
face="Times New Roman" color=#000000 size=2
FAMILY="SERIF"><FONT lang=0
face="Times New Roman" color=#0000ff size=3 FAMILY="SERIF">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.The United States
standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the
original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And
bureaucracies live forever.So the next time you are handed a spec and told
we have always done it that way and wonder what horse's ass came up with
that, 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.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. 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 ??<FONT lang=0
face="Times New Roman" color=#000000 size=3
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