The wheel’s still in spin

H. Kishie Singh

As America emerged as a nation, one of the first demands was for a railroad system for this vast country. England already had a well-established rail road system. In February, 1804 a steam engine pulled a loaded train. This is what the Americans wanted.

British engineers were invited. They laid the tracks according to the width of the Standard Gauge of 4’8.5”. The gauge of the railway track is the clear minimum perpendicular distance between the inner face of the two rails. Now, how did the Brits arrive at this figure of 4’8.5”? Well, if they used any other spacing for their cross-country coaches, the wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England. That was the spacing of the wheel ruts!

Wheel rutted roads in England? Hundreds of years ago! How was that possible?

Imperial Rome had built the first long distance roads in England for their chariots. These roads have been in use ever since. Roman chariots dug the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of breaking the wheels. The Roman chariots were made wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two horses. Two horses’ arses measure 4’8.5”. So, the US standard of 4’ 8.5” inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman chariot!

The continuing story of 4’8.5”...

The Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad has two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the Solid Rocket Boosters made by a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a little bigger, but there were constraints. The SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad track ran through tunnels and the SRBs had to fit the tunnel. The tunnel is just a little wider than the track. And the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ arses!

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what has to be definitely the world’s most advanced and sophisticated  transport system, was determined over 2,000 years ago by the width of a horses arse!

Now consider this. When the first motor car came to India, the wheels ran in the same ruts the bullock carts had made. Amazing! Not really. 

We had chariots in India a thousand years before Rome. Lord Krishna ferried the mighty warrior Arjuna to battle in Kurukshetra in a chariot. He sat facing two horses’ arses. The wheel spacing was the width of two horses’ arses, 4’8.5”!

At the turn of the last century, along came Henry Ford and other auto manufacturers in America. They took it for granted that 4’8.5” is the norm for the track. The wheel base could vary, but not the track.

The indestructible and famous Jeep of the Second World War had a track of 4’8.5”. That track came in very handy.

Take the wheels off, remove the tyres, refit the rims and the Jeep could run on railway tracks the Brits had laid in Burma, Borneo and Malaya before the war.

Happy Motoring!