Re: Some Questions

["steamfreak" <steamfreak711@yahoo.com>]

<signal_spotter@my-deja.com> wrote in message
8siv4d$oio$1@nnrp1.deja.com">news:8siv4d$oio$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <39eccf29$1@news.iprimus.com.au>,
>   "Erk" <erk@erkV69.au.com> wrote:
> > Glen
> >
> > I think that the English may have decided what standard gauge was
> going to
> > be before we used it. We used it because they did and they built a
> lot of
> > our early trains.
> >
> There's an urban myth going around that the standard guage width is
> equivelant to 2 horses arses. Apparently back in the days when England
> was under Roman rulership, the Roman's built a lot of their
> infrastructure such as roads, sewerage etc. Anyway the roads were wide
> enough for the chariots which were pulled along by 2 horses side by
> side. These chariots caused ruts in the roads. Anyway when the Romans
> vacated England they left this legacy of roads. Therefore when the
> English built buggies for these roads they made them wide enough to
> follow the ruts. So as time progressed and the railway was invented the
> buggy makers became the carriage builders. And since all their
> machinery was set up for the buggies, they kept the same guage for the
> carriages. Therefore the rails were set at this guage. I don't know how
> true this is and it doesn't cater for broad guage or narrow guage.

The Irish 5'3" gauge came about because their horses were bigger.  The
narrow gauge lines were built to a lower budget, less money means less feed
and smaller (skinnier) horses.

steamfreak