I doubt anyone who has e-mail has not received the blurb about how standard railroad gauge, 4' 8.5", was directly derived from the wheel spacing of Roman chariots.

I was dubious of this, and thought it to be an old wives' tale. I did do some looking into the wheel spacing on Roman chariots, and did find that at least some of them were close to 4' 8.5", but there didn't seem to be a definitive standard for chariots, and the link between the wheel spacing on Roman chariots and standard gauge seemed to be nothing more than coincidental.

But, lo and behold, reading S. G. Reed's History of the Texas railroads, he says somewhere in the first 75 pages (sorry, I tried to find it again but couldn't) that standard gauge was supposedly based on the width of Roman chariots. The first time I've seen it in writing in a credible source (at least that I recall).

Even though I can't remember Reed's exact words, or find the exact quote at this moment, I am certain Reed's wording on the subject was vague. He didn't make any attempt to justify the connection, and he too seemed uncertain if there was any basis in reality.

Does anybody out there have an defintive evidence either way? I would infer that a lack of definitive evidence supporting the claim would tend to undermine it.

Thanks.


Railway Preservation News
hkading@rypn.org

What I want to know is why the northern railroads and waggons used a gage of 4' 8 1/2 inches, but the southern railroads and waggons used a 5 ft. gage? Henry Ford built a wide track model T to match the ruts in the southern roads! We know the rails were laid to match the carts and waggons but why the gage difference from north to south. I find this more interesting that what the Romans used, and while the gage of the southern railroads is well known I have heard nothing about the fact that their waggons were also a wider gage. The Model T info is from Clymers book on the T.
M. Nix


http://members.aol.com/aqualieb/projectspage.html
2rivers@upstel.net

> Does anybody out there have an defintive
> evidence either way?

Interesting read at website below.

http://www.snopes2.com/history/american/gauge.htm
kalbran1@san.rr.com

Is there anybody on the forum in Italy ... we need you to take a tape measure and make a fan trip to the Appian Way! From a "roster" point of view I would imagine there were a lot more freight wagons than chariots. I would also imagine since the cities consisted of narrow winding streets they needed to be able to make sharp turns. We also have to take measurements at Pompeii (sp) since the crosswalk stones have gaps for the wagon wheels.


lamontdc@adelphia.net

Keith's reference is similar to this posting from the web. Crews at Heber during the Olympics will recognize it as the Day 2 posting of my "SAFETY FIRST ...always (with a smile)"

WHY ARE THE RAILS OF AMERICAN RAILROADS 4 FOOT 8 & 1/2 INCHES APART?

from the Wilmington Chapter NRHS, February, 1997 Issue of the Transfer Table.

They are that way in the U.S. because they were that way in England where railroads got started and it just carried over.

So the reason = foreign imports.

They were that way in England because the people who built the first railroads were the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways.

So the reason = lack of creativity.

The trams were that way because people who built the pre-railroad tramways were same people who built the wagons and carriages and they used the same jigs and tools.

So the reason = out-dated tools & technology.

The wagon wheels were that far apart because the ruts in the old, bog distance roads were that far apart, and if they tried to use any other spacing, the wheels would break.

So the reason = following some old rut.

The ruts were that far apart because the first long distance roads were built by the Romans for their legions and the ruts were formed by the wheels of the Roman war chariots.

So the reason = military occupation.

The Roman war chariots were all alike because Imperial Rome kept the Empire together by decree and it was through standardization that they managed to control that big of an Empire.

So the reason = the original military specification.

The real reason Imperial Rome picked that spacing for the wheels on their war chariots was dictated by the basic engineering required to harness a horse to pull the chariot. They probably wanted to keep the horses hooves out of the ruts to avoid physical harm to the horse from having its foot turned the wrong way by it landing in a wheel rut.

So the reason = animal preservation.

But the reason for designing the war chariots the way they did was simply dictated by the anatomy of the standard war horse and the need to construct the chariot in such as way as to make room for the width of the horse's body...

So the real, true, and ultimate reason why the wheels of the American Iron Horse are four feet, eight and one half inches apart is entirely due to some horse's ass. [Please note that the Editor is NOT responsible for any conclusions you might draw from reading that last line outside of the context of this article.]

Or...the other version:

The reason the rails are 4 foot 8 & 1/2 inches apart is because that it is the universal overall average common distance between the neck and the ankles of the average, run-of-the-mill, damsel-in-distress.


utweyesguy@aol.com

Some of the pictures I've seen of the early Welsh colliery trams show an outside guarded rail (basically an L-girder) with unflanged wheels. Perhaps the original gauge WAS 5'0" which had to be narrowed when they switched to a strap rail and an inside flanged wheel.



The Electric City Trolley Museum Association

> The reason the rails are 4 foot 8 & 1/2
> inches apart is because that it is the
> universal overall average common distance
> between the neck and the ankles of the
> average, run-of-the-mill,
> damsel-in-distress.

I hadn't thought of that one. Now that does make a lot of sense...

I'm afraid that this story falls into the category of being too good to ignore, even though there are nearly no facts involved. It's sort of like the old one about the Model T Ford coming in any color as long as it was black. In fact it came in five other colors at various times, but black was the cheapest as it was the fastest drying color, therefore the most common used by far.

No one can provide a "definitive" answer but the best I've seen is from a 1943 book, The Evolution of Railways by Charles E. Lee (published by The Railway Gazette in London). He traces these "ruts" back far in time before Rome to the Greeks and then to Crete. As for the gauge of early British tramroads, they varied from four to five feet. All were related to the width of a horse, which had to walk between the rails as it pulled the cars. Robert Stephenson built his first locomotives to match the track already in use at the coal mine where it was to work. This myth about the Romans is too embedded in the culture to convince many that it isn't correct, but it isn't. Too bad, as it makes such a delicious story.


Museum of Transportation
rdgoldfede@aol.com

> I doubt anyone who has e-mail has not
> received the blurb about how standard
> railroad gauge, 4' 8.5", was directly
> derived from the wheel spacing of Roman
> chariots.

> I was dubious of this, and thought it to be
> an old wives' tale. I did do some looking
> into the wheel spacing on Roman chariots,
> and did find that at least some of them were
> close to 4' 8.5", but there didn't seem
> to be a definitive standard for chariots,
> and the link between the wheel spacing on
> Roman chariots and standard gauge seemed to
> be nothing more than coincidental.

> But, lo and behold, reading S. G. Reed's
> History of the Texas railroads, he says
> somewhere in the first 75 pages (sorry, I
> tried to find it again but couldn't) that
> standard gauge was supposedly based on the
> width of Roman chariots. The first time I've
> seen it in writing in a credible source (at
> least that I recall).

> Even though I can't remember Reed's exact
> words, or find the exact quote at this
> moment, I am certain Reed's wording on the
> subject was vague. He didn't make any
> attempt to justify the connection, and he
> too seemed uncertain if there was any basis
> in reality.

> Does anybody out there have an defintive
> evidence either way? I would infer that a
> lack of definitive evidence supporting the
> claim would tend to undermine it.

> Thanks.

You want definitive? This is as close as I can find, from the text Wagon, Chariot and Carriage: Symbol and Status in the History of Transport
(Thames & Hudson Publishers, New York, 1992), by Stuart Piggott (Professor of Archaeology at
the University of Edinburgh, 1946-1977; Visiting Professor of Archaeology, Harvard University;
Fellow of the British Academy):

"As we saw earlier on, the wheel-tracks or gauge of prehistoric ox-carts, from that at Zurich of the early third millenium BC to those at Lchashen of a millennium and a half later, had maintained a
remarkably consistent width of between 1.30 and 1.60 meters in the recorded examples, averaging 1.45 meters. To anticipate, this was maintained in prehistoric Europe with horse-drawn carriages and chariots, c. 600-100 BC, averaging 1.30 meters; Roman cart-ruts average 1.40 meters. As this must have meant adherence to a round number of units, five ‘short feet’ of about 11.40 inches would fit, and such short foot units were common in antiquity, and up until modern standardized measurements were imposed by legislation.

At the end of the last century English farm wagons had considerable regional variants, there
extremes somewhere between 1.30 and 1.90 meters. About 40 years ago an old gentleman told me that when he moved from the West Country on inheriting his present Lincolnshire estate in the 1880's he had to have all his farmyard and personal vehicles altered ‘to fit Lincolnshire ruts–like tramlines.’ He would indeed, by about 10 inches between southwest and northeast. In Yorkshire, the Dales wagon of the last century had a gauge of 4 feet 4 inches, the Moor wagon 5 feet.

When George Stephenson came to build his Stockton to Darlington railway line in 1825 he built
it to a local gauge of 4 feet 8 inches, and this, modified by a half inch to 4 feet 8 ½ inches by an
Act of Parliament in 1828 when the line was extended from Stockton to Middlesborough, was
made compulsory in 1846. This has remained standard for British railway lines until the present day–1.43 meters as compared with the prehistoric average of 1.45 meters for ox-wagons from Switzerland to the Caucasus, and for railways on the Continent from 1832. British Rail has inherited a strangely ancient legacy."



kevinmccabe@avenew.com

"All were related to the width of a horse, which had to walk between the rails as it pulled the cars."

In a little more modern context, when the "pipe mills" were first built at the steel plant in Lorain, OH around the turn of the century, the different mill bays were serviced by a three foot gauge RR. You have to imagine 25 bays with a transept corridor running at right angles and a lot of one point street car #2 switches. The dollies were one MULE power rigs. This setup lasted until 1930 when the new transept bay was built but all that track is still there. The old mule barn was converted to office space and retained its' warm weather ammonia smell into the 70's.
I have seen photos of two foot mine RR's pulled by small horses and mules. The animals spent their entire life below ground and had no trouble working in the dark or stepping around the narrow track. Of course now the SPCA would not allow it but it was pretty common power.

lamontdc@adelphia.net

Another excellent reference is "Early Wooden Railways" by M.J.T. Lewes, about early European and British mining tramways. I'm not sure which side of the debate this book supports.

tmanz@afo.net

The story has been around a very long time. I have seen it mentioned in a couple of books published in the late 1870's and 1890's.

These books do not attest to the veracity of the story; but they both state that the story is "old" to them so it must have been around since the very early days of railroading.

The last e-mail version I got included mention of the space shuttle boosters being limited to be a certain size due to the gauge of the railway they were to be transported on. Of course this is not mentioned in the antuque books I have. But it makes me wonder if the story existed back when the tramways were created and got added to when the railroads came into being... and I wonder what else will be added in the future as technology marches on.

Dateline: Feb 1, 2046

"E-mail is limited to pages 4 feet 8 and a half inches wide due to the width of a Roman horse's a..."

Dateline: Feb 1, 2146

"Holographic transmissions are always set to 4 feet 8 and a half inches wide due to the width..."

Semper Vaporo,
Charles T. McCullough