Re: [OT] US Rail Guage...

["Daniel Bowen" <dbowen@custard.REMOVE.net.au>]

A debunking of this happened to come my way yesterday:


>
> Every year or two someone puts forward the proposition that
> "standard gauge" is actually based on a Roman military standard.
> The thesis goes like this:
>
> The standard gauge of North American railways is based
> on that of early British railways. That standard gauge
> was set by George Stephenson in the 19th century: he
> built the Stockton & Darlington line and urged that
> other lines be built to the same gauge. He set his rails
> based on the distance between the wheels of the mine wagons
> that were in use on plate-ways in and around the coal-mines
> in that area. Those wagons were based on the local
> agricultural wagons. They in turn (so goes the thesis)
> were equipped with wheels-sets that would run in
> the grooves in the Roman roads that still existed
> (well, the rights-of-way still existed) leading to
> Hadrian's Wall. The grooves had been worn by
> Roman chariot traffic. And so, the gauge of our
> trains was actually set by a Roman military specification.
>
> Two years ago I visited Coninbraga, an excavated Roman town
> in Portugal. Going through the arched gateway into this
> fortified town, there were indeed grooves in the paving
> stones, so I attempted to measure the "gauge": would it
> be close to standard gauge, or to the Portugese/Spanish
> gauge?
>
> What I found was that there were so many grooves, that by
> choosing an appropriate pair, one could find any gauge from
> about one metre to about two metres!
>
> Wondering about this, I recently I wrote to Dr. A. Trevor Hodge,
> Professor Emeritus in the Classics department at Carleton
> University, Ottawa, Canada. He has written extensively
> about technology in classical times (e.g. in Scientific American)
> and has published articles on railway topics. His reply
> is copied below, and he gave permission for it to be posted here:
>
> The story that you retail to me about the standard British
> rail gauge of 4' 8.5" being based on grooves worn, or cut,
> in the paving of Roman roads is indeed a hoary old chestnut,
> familiar to all railway historians. Let us get rid of the
> easy bit first.
>
> There is no question of the gauge being based on the grooves
> worn by Roman chariots, because the Roman army did not have chariots.
> Other countries did, but in the Roman Empire the only time you
> ever saw a chariot was as a ceremonial conveyance in a triumphal
> procession in Rome. The army didn't use them. And even non-Roman
> chariots were not likely to wear ruts in stone, for, in the
> interests of speed and manoeuverability, you made them as
> light as possible, so that they rather resembled the sulky used
> in modern harness racing. Not much chance there of wearing
> grooves! In fact, so fragile were they that with Greek chariots
> the first thing you did when you got home was to remove the
> chariot's wheels, like the wheels of a modern racing bicycle,
> to take the strain off them.
>
> Now, for the origins of the gauge. That was certainly based
> on the width of existing tram-roads and plateways in the mines
> of the North of England, and there seems no doubt that that
> reflected the standard size of ordinary carts. Carts usually
> did come with their wheels about five feet apart, not because
> of anything in the roadway, but because that suits the size
> and proportions of the horse. So the Oxford Companion to
> British Railway History (Oxford, 1997), p523.
>
> As for grooves in Roman roads, there are hardly any. I would
> dearly like to see some of these enthusiasts from Northumbria
> or Durham actually go out and look at some of the Roman roads
> in the area of the early railways, for it doesn't sound as
> if they have ever done it. In fact, grooves (usually cut, not
> worn) are found commonly in only two places. One is the road
> from a quarry, where the heavily laden carts may have to
> cross a stretch of bare rock, and there are grooves to keep
> them steady. The other is Pompeii, where the roadway was
> often crossed by rows of stepping stones for pedestrians,
> with grooves between them for wheeled traffic. I do not know
> of anyone who has made an actual detailed study of their gauge,
> and the publications are unreliable, for you often don't know
> whether they are measuring from the inner edges of the grooves
> or the middle. And in any case, as you found, there is very
> great variation in the gauge of the grooves.
>
> In short, the whole story of the Roman origin of the rail
> gauge is a nice story, and repeated ad infinitum just because
> of that, but a nice story is all it is. There is no
> demonstrable truth to it at all!
>
> So there you are - another good myth laid to rest.
>
> Dewi Williams
> Kanata, Ontario, Canada



--
Daniel Bowen, Melbourne, Australia
dbowen@custard.REMOVE.net.au
Melbourne public transport FAQ http://www.custard.net.au/melbtrans/