Trivia - How Did U.S. Decide on Distance Between Rails?

I just heard this on the history channel and couldn’t believe it. The question is, how did U.S. railroads decide on the standard distance of 4’ 8 1/2" between rails?

Oh no, not this again (no offense intended towards OP).

What we know as standard gauge was established in the bill to build the transcontinental railroad. There’s been much debate (and no definitive answer) as to how they came up with such an odd figure.

And no, it hasnothing to do with the width of a horse’s butt. Although that’s a colorful story, it has no basis in fact.

The history channel said it comes from the distance between the wheels on a Roman chariot. I never heard such a thing and I couldn’t believe it!

It is just as likely that it had something to do with the width of a real person’s butt as that of a horse since no horses were meant to ride in the first locomotives or trains. Or, if you don’t buy that reasoning, it could have been something to do with the average distance between the insides of wheels in “standard” carriages using the roads at the time. Maybe the original layers of track got a good deal on fence posts that were seven feet long, so they settled on 56.5" which left something near an even foot on either ends of the ties when the track was pinned.

The fact is that we are highly unlikely to have the real answer at this point.

In an indirect way, I’d say, sort of. But only because the distance made sense and worked. It makes sense that vehicles, whether on road or rail, were built to fit the propulsion system (horse, generally). I’m inclined to think that the actual 4’ 8.5" came about from some rails in England being laid with a 5 foot outside gauge, then someone figured out the flanges should be on the inside, and that was somewhere in the neighborhhood of the current standard.

Selector, that’s sort of what they said. That we used the British width of rail and they got it from the roads which were designed originally for Roman chariots. I found that hard to believe, though.

Oh no, not this again. (Offense intended.)

It’s actually 11.3 packages of Kadee #5 coupler packs, laid end to end. And no, I don’t know how somebody could have .3 pkgs of coupler packs. And yes, I heard about it on that channel between 152 and 153.

Now, how many horn-hook couplers would it take, if they were horn-hooked end to end… Wait, you can’t…

It really is a classic “form follows function” answer. It’s what works best given the physics of the situation.

Geez, I though everyone read all about this the last 10,000 times it came up. Anyway, Snopes sums it up quite nicely, and has at least since the article was last updated in April 2001:

"This is one of those items that – although wrong in many of its details — isn’t exactly false in an overall sense and is perhaps more fairly labelled as “True, but for trivial and unremarkable reasons.”

and

“In other words, there was nothing inevitable about a railroad gauge supposedly traceable to the size of wheel ruts in Imperial Rome. Had the Civil War taken a different course, the eventual standard railroad gauge used throughout North America might well have been different than the current one.”

See http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm for the whole story.

Steve

OK, offense taken. Sorry guys, I did miss the last 10K times this came up. I just thought it was interesting. Didn’t mean to be a pain in the neck.

The least unbelieveable excuse I’ve heard was that when George Stephenson was asked to engineer the tracks for the Stockton and Darlington, he started with the 56 inch gauge used at the colliery he was working for and eased it 1/2 inch to handle the longer wheelbases of the non-coal-bearing rolling stock.

That’s no more ridiculous than many of the other reputed origins. And, like the size standards of ladies’ shoes and men’s hats, it sounds more refined than a simple (and honest,) “D…d if I know!” (Or care!)

Of course, my prototype runs on 1067mm gauge, not 1435.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

The explanation from my PHD history teacher is that it comes from the roman gauge of roads. The roman gauge of roads came from the width of two donkey butts. Eventually, one of those roman mathematicians determined the average width of two donkey butts. Then, England, being under rule by the Romans, adopted the Roman standard for roads. This also resulted as the same standard for rails. That standard was used in America because A) Most people in those days were from England and B) The first locomotives came from England. So there you have it!

The biggest flaw in this story: standard gauge didn’t exist at that point in time (your A and B examples above).

Actually, that’s the SECOND biggest flaw in the story. The first is the way the teacher convolutedly explained the width of Roman roads. He (probably being some form of hippie) thought that the roads were built for peaceful purposes. Hah! Roman roads were designed for one thing: to make marching of their Legions easier and faster. The standard width of a Roman road is based on six men across, the standard column formation of the Legions.

Roman roads were NOT rutted when they ruled Europe. Ruts slow down Legions as the men have to avoid tripping in them. Slave labor was cheap in the Empire, so they made sure that road crews were out refularly keeping the roads smooth. Once the Empire fell and the Dark ages took over, everyone kept using the roads but no one maintained them. Ruts formed AFTER the Romans.

4’8 1/2" or 1435mm is not a “weird” measurement, it’s just the way it is. Nor is it even a particular standard throughout the world - many nations have big rail networks made up entirely of other gauges, either larger or smaller. Examples include 5’0" in Russia, 5’6’ in India, Pakistan,Potugal and Spain, 3’6" in Africa, Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand, and extensive metre gauge networks throughout the world, to name a few. The choice of rail gauge was determined by many factors - colony or independent nation, the economic situation, the natural resources to be exploited, who financed the railways, who built them, who owned them, and who supplied locomotives and rolling stock. Or in the case of the US, simply by government decree. Prior to that there were many miles of broad and narrow gauge…

Going back to the very origins of railways, you’ll find that wooden-railed lines were operating in certain mining districts of England during the reign of Elizabeth I. By the early 18th century where iron was available, iron rails began to replace these wooden pole or baulk roads. Surviving relics and documents indicate a number of gauges were used, ranging from 2’ to 6’ or more. None of these wagon ways, as they were then known, were in the vicinity of surviving Roman “rutways”. While Stephenson favoured 4’8 1/2", Brunel built the Great Western to a gauge of 7’ 1/4" - the Romans must have had fat horses down that way…

It’s significant that this rubbish only does the rounds of the internet, although it predates this medium by many years - I have NEVER seen ANY reference in any well-researched railway history written by any reputable railway historian that linked the dimension of standard gauge to Roman chariots. And no-one has ever demonstrated any link between chariots, the early railway builders, and the rollingstock they designed and built.

I once read an interesting article in a technical journal that suggested the practical limit for making faggoted iron axles in the ver

[quote user=“marknewton”]

4’8 1/2" or 1435mm is not a “weird” measurement, it’s just the way it is. Nor is it even a particular standard throughout the world - many nations have big rail networks made up entirely of other gauges, either larger or smaller. Examples include 5’0" in Russia, 5’6’ in India, Pakistan,Potugal and Spain, 3’6" in Africa, Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand, and extensive metre gauge networks throughout the world, to name a few. The choice of rail gauge was determined by many factors - colony or independent nation, the economic situation, the natural resources to be exploited, who financed the railways, who built them, who owned them, and who supplied locomotives and rolling stock. Or in the case of the US, simply by government decree. Prior to that there were many miles of broad and narrow gauge…

Going back to the very origins of railways, you’ll find that wooden-railed lines were operating in certain mining districts of England during the reign of Elizabeth I. By the early 18th century where iron was available, iron rails began to replace these wooden pole or baulk roads. Surviving relics and documents indicate a number of gauges were used, ranging from 2’ to 6’ or more. None of these wagon ways, as they were then known, were in the vicinity of surviving Roman “rutways”. While Stephenson favoured 4’8 1/2", Brunel built the Great Western to a gauge of 7’ 1/4" - the Romans must have had fat horses down that way…

It’s significant that this rubbish only does the rounds of the internet, although it predates this medium by many years - I have NEVER seen ANY reference in any well-researched railway history written by any reputable railway historian that linked the dimension of standard gauge to Roman chariots. And no-one has ever demonstrated any link between chariots, the early railway builders, and the rollingstock they designed and built.

I once read an interesting arti

This is off topic but the question reminded me of the explaination of why the distance between the pitcher’s rubber and home plate is 60’ 6" and not exactly 60’. In the mid 1800s, there were many versions of baseball played, each with it’s own dimensions. It was decided to standardize the way baseball was played under a common set of rules, and surveryor Alexander Cartwright was commisioned to layout the standard diamond. Cartwright intended the distance to be 60’ 0" but when he wrote that on the original diagram, the second zero was misread as a 6 and it was written into the official rules that way. So because of Cartwright’s poor penmanship, pitcher’s have had to throw the ball an extra 6 inches for well over 100 years. I guess that they should be glad he didn’t do that to the first zero.

PS. The distance of 60’ 6" is the measurement to the back point of home plate. The distance between the rubber and the front edge is about 17 inches less.

What’s an inch, BTW? Or, should that be “Why’s and inch?”

To add to Marks comments
the Stockton and Darlington wagon carts, like most trams at the time, were built to haul coal or slate, a heavy commodities. If the wagons were too wide, the axle split, if they were too big, the horse couldnt pull it. So over the years from the time they were started, the cart builders came up with A: a cart that was wide enought to carry a decent load without breaking, B; that was small enough for a horse to pull, and in doing so came up with a wheel gauge that accomodated the largest wooden axle that could carry the load, and still allow a horse to walk between the rails without stumbling on the wooden rails, I firmly beleive it had nothing to do with chariots are anything like that, but that it was a horses backside that gave us 4 ’ 8 1/2", it was just a trail and error guage that worked, and it stuck.

Yeah, I saw that show on THC.