Pets n Critters / Ride to Stockwell

Annie and Kate are shedded out and brushed out and looking pretty!

Hee - and here's a brilliant piece of analysis for you (apologies to Annie and Kate):

INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON

Railroad track specifications and transportation. Definitely work related.

Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding

Of it will depend on the earlier part of the content.

_________________________________________

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.

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

inEngland, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

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. Therefore the United States standard
railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the
original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot..

Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a

specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass
came up with it?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman
army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the
rear ends of two war horses. (Two horse's asses.)

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, orSRB's.

The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah .

The eng who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make

them a bit fatter, but the SRB's 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, and the SRB's

had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the

railroad track, and the railroad track, asyou 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?

Ancient horse's asses control almost everything... and
CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.

From the Internet - Author unknown