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From: nobody@roadie.demon.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Roman RR
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 00:12:09 GMT

*warning this goes on a bit*
(not that I'm bored, or anything, you understand)

In message <32628552.205D@online.no> Bob Rust scribbled:

> Could anyone comment on the following pearl of list lore? It's being
> discussed on the Classics list. The source was long stripped by the time
> it got there.
...
> How Specs Live Forever
>
> 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 the US railroads
> were built by English expatriates. (...etc etc...)

Well I'm sure if you wandered over to a newsgroup full of railway archeology enthusiasts, you would find that at the time steam trains were first being developed there were a very large number of "standard" gauges in use. Oh god I'm going to be sad and find a book for the A.F.U. maxim to provide references....

First reference that springs to hand : O.S.Nock, World Atlas of Railways, 1978 (ISBN:086134 003 5). Chapter 1. Goes into great length about the use of (horse/human powered) railways in mines in England/Germany 18th century ...hmm, several gauges and types of rail mentioned...19th century...blaa blaa Stockton & Darlington blaa blaa; first Russian railway 6ft; GWR (england, brunel) 7ft 1/4 inch; "1846: Despite the difficulties that had arisen in England from a _diversity_ (my emphasis) of rail gagues, in North America many lines were built in the early days with different gauges both in Canada and in the USA. In the latter the situation was not finally resolved until after the end of the Civil War, when some lines in the southern states were converted to the European and N.American standard of 1,435 mm (4ft 8 1/2 inches)". Talk about the 1840's "Guage War".

Okay not early enough for what you want...Lets try Railway Archaeology, O.S.Nock, 1981 (no ISBN). Chapter 1. First railways, Causey Arch, 1725 (!), [102 foot span stone bridge] "2 tracks of 4 feet gauge abreast of each other...woodern rails 6 to 7 inches wide by 5 inches deep, spaced to provide a rail gauge of 4 feet." - This is cited in the middle of long discussion about the use of early railways/plateways in the transportation of mining.

What else? J.B.Snell, Early Railways, 1964, (no ISBN). Oh this is better. Opening paragraph :
"There are 2 elements in the definition of a railway. One is the specially prepared track, designed to carry heavy loads with reduced friction; the other is the system of guidance which makes it unnecessary for vehicles to be steered. Defined in this way, railways are very much older than most people realise. One of the differences between ++GREEKS++ and ++ROMANS++ was that, while the Romans laboured greatly to build roads all over Europe, the Greeks characteristically saw no reason why they should go to the troble of forming flat stone surfaces ten feet side or more when two narrow ruts carved into the rock would serve the purpose. _These_ rutways were the ancestors of railways; they provided a smooth and relatively friction-free running surface, combined with guidance for the wheels. From remains in various places around the Mediterranean it can be seen that their engineering was also quite sophisticated. There were sidings and passing loops, and the tracks ran wherever possible along contours to preserve a level grade."...Lots more talk about 17th century feeder railways for the canals...Richard Trevithick builds first steam powered locomotive 1804 on a plateway with a 4' 2" gauge...Wylan railway 5' gauge...etc etc ...mention is made that R.Stephenson (fan of 4'8" cos that was the one he used) built several locos for export to the USA for the first railways (only one ever made it there though, reliability not being too high...)

So maybe you should blame the Greeks not the Romans? :-)

One last reference as we still haven't got a satisfactory answer as to where Robert Stephenson got 4'8" from...Jack Simmons "The Railways of Britain" 1961+1986 (ISBN 0-333-41990-1) chap.1 (again) "The expansion of the railways encountered some difficult problems. The tacks had not been constructed to a single gauge. In the early days several had been tried. The 4'8" of the northern coal lines, _adopted in the days of horse traction_, had always been used by the Stephensons, and it _ruled without question throughout the North of England_ and, with some exceptions, in Scotland. But as engineers began to think about railways in the 1830's, this gauge encountered its critics. That it had been _found suitable_, by _long experience_, for _horses working on colliery lines_ did not prove its fitness for the steam locomotive...blaa blaa Brunel again... Ireland adopted the gauge of 5' 3", still standard today. [Oooh this has a reference : "The Stephensons' 4'8" prevailed over most of Europe, though wider gauges were adopted in Russia (5') and Spain (5'6"). The USA showed a remarkable _diversity_ of gauges, from 4'8 1/2" to 6', and this diversity proveded a serious handicap to its economnic development - see G.R.Taylor and I.D.Neu, "The American Railroad Network, 1861-90" (1956) and, for a general survey, L.Day, "Broad Gauge" (1985)]

So we have some evidence that the northern coal workings, which are very near (part of) Hadrian's Wall, used 4'8" because that worked best with horses pulling coal waggons. But the Romans built smooth roads, not rutways, even if over 1000 years earlier. And I can say from personal experience that traditional agricultural carts and other horse-drawn carriages built in Southern England are all sorts of different width - every area had its own style.

I also think the comments about Roman War Chariots are way out. I'm not convinced they were built to one standard, but anyway, the Romans kept their roads smooth. After the Romans "left", we had the "dark ages" (note the quotes!), during which time there would have only been a small amount of cart-traffic (in comparison to the Roman period), of short distance to market-towns mostly, so a standardised rut would have had great trouble developing! But this is definatly better discussed with your Classics group.

And where I live (Buckinghamshire) there are lots and lots of medieval tracks, the biggest being the "Ridgeway". There is no tradition of building 4'8" gauge carts, though...

p.s. Re: the big railway discussion above - I got a lot of train books when I was a kiddy, I had to find them in a box in the attic, OK?

Richard "So my great-grandfather was a surveyor on the first trans-Canada railway, but we don't think _he_ was responsible for dynamiting the salmon runs..." B.
--
Richard Bowles.

From: nobody@roadie.demon.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Roman RR Ruts
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 23:52:22 GMT

In message <1996Oct16.093435@vms.ocom.okstate.edu> you scribbled:

> ISTR reading a railway history book that attributed Stephenson's gauge to
> the fact that he was employed in the Northumbrian coal fields ( way aye mun
> ) early in his career (Wylam???) and the coal master was a "fan" of Ancient
> Rome ( especially with Hadrian's Wall being near by) and the mines were all
> gauged to 4ft 8.5 inches. Of course early ironways were horse drawn so the
> physical requirements would be similar to Roman chariots....

Did I say in my earlier post that it was *originaly* 4ft 8 inches, the extra 1/2 inch was only added in the 1840's because of problems with flanges and friction (there are whole chapters on different ways of making wheels move along some sort of pre-laid guidance system...and that's not me being silly with words just pointing out that there are a lot of other ways than outer-flanged wheels on tracks shaped like wot you know now...) Unfortunatly none of them really talk about *why* Stephenson settled on 4'8" beyond it was the one used at Killingworth which was where he worked before starting the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1821 [...look what you've made me do, I've got one of my books out again...]

"George Stephenson was born in 1781, in a house which still stands beside Wylan railway..." that's his only connection given with that line...

"William Hedley, of the Wylam colliery, a few miles west of Newcastle, was the next man to build a locomotive. The Wylam Railway, a wooden line of great antiquity, had justbeen rebuilt as a FIVE-FOOT gauge PLATEWAY, and for it in 1813 Hedley built his famous Puffing Billy...." "...around 1830 the Wylam line was rebuilt as a FIVE-FOOT gauge RAILWAY..."

Also, because it is said in great length and I'm not going to type in several pages of stuff, that what the TRACK is made of determines the axle width - metal rails only became practical around the turn of the century (1800's) as manufacturing techniques improved, and wooden rails had to be much thicker, hence the distance between wheels was less than that for the same size waggon/cart on metal rails.

Early mining railways were *not* all 4'8" (I said this last time I'm sure), *not* all in Northumberland (South Wales, Germany, France...) and Hadrians Wall could hardly be cited as making someone want to copy a system that the romans may-or-may-not have used - and to the 1/2 inch?! - If the people on the Classics list can't answer that one do you really expect someone in 17th/18th century northern england to know something so obscure?. I did however say that 4'8" (not 4'8.5"!) had been found to be a good compromise with horse-drawn carts...but a cart-horse is a very different size to a pit-ponies, and inside the mines humans provided much of the motive power...

If anyone is in York (UK, yes, "Old" York) they could go to the National Railway Museum which I believe has quite a bit on different railway gauges; and then there is Beamish Open-Air Museum near Durham which has a bit on early Northumbrian mining and railways (although its probably buried under mounds of Victoriana and trams to please the kiddies...)

...and I don't think Julius Caesar (etc) would be very impressed with your statement that war chariots were coal trucks! _Please_ go and find a picture of each of these and play "spot the difference"...! (e.g. wheels, number, size, location, thereof; construction; use; contents; method of connection to the motive power; number of horses; etc etc)

--
Richard Bowles.