Thread by @AdroitlyAbsurd

The railroad gauge article has been going around for ages; while I agree w/ it the point that history is important (it better be, given my chosen career!) the folksy piece has several issues, as snopes points out.

This is a good lesson in storytelling & interpretation (🧵):
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https://twitter.com/cavalorn/status/1177843714707922944

Track gauge has always been more based on power of precedent than anything else. It’s true that George Stephenson’s 1st engine, Blücher, used *almost* 4’ 8 1/2” because the Killingworth Colliery where he developed his early locos already used that for their horse-drawn wagons. /2

But the colliery owners had no clue what size Roman chariot axles were (& wouldn’t have given a fig). It was a happy coincidence. There were lines in hundreds of gauges at mines, quarries, etc., which didn’t much matter as they weren’t interconnected.

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Many of these carriageways used only one horse, or horses in a line, not in teams side-to-side. Why? You don’t want the horses tripping. These early lines usually had the horses walk between them, with partial or covered sleepers to avoid stumbling. /4

These lines had little to do with road wagons. The idea that you would use the “same jigs & tools” for rail cars is silly. Why limit yourself, when the low friction advantage of railroads encourages larger cars w/ heavier loads? Early on it was simply ease of wagon conversion. /5

Stephenson obsessed over rails, but not their width. He was more concerned w/ better infrastructure, as the early tracks snapped like twigs under the new, heavier steam engines.

An excellent resource on these early trains is here, btw: locos-in-profile.co.uk/Early_Locomoti…

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Once Stephenson started making locos many followed his model, but that didn’t nail down track gauge. Famously Brunel advocated 7’ “broad gauge;” he added a 1/4” after testing, just as Stephenson added 1/2” to 4’ 8” track.

Yes, Stephenson ADDED the final 1/2”! Not the Romans!

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None of this explains Irish gauge, Iberian, or countless narrow gauges, let alone the conversions of “standard” to the predominant “broad” gauge on the Indian subcontinent (see chart, below)!

“But!” I hear you cry, “we were taking about America!”

Fine. Let’s address that:

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Sure, the 1st early US railroads were built using English equipment & know-how. But pretty quickly American mechanics & engineers adapted the technology to their needs, churning out locomotives, rail, & new innovations faster & faster.

Plenty were of different gauges. /9

Railroads in what became the Confederacy were mostly short-haul lines connecting to ports, nothing like the dense networks of the industrial north. Southern lines had mixed gauges & were loath to share rolling stock, & teamsters benefited from transferring goods between RRs /10

That’s the pre-war setup. During the war the Confederate constitution actually forbid internal infrastructure improvements to improve commerce other than coastal works by their congress (Article 1 Sec. 8 part 3).

So no gov. sponsored standardization, then. 🙄 /11

Between the Confederate’s scorched-earth retreat policy & Sherman’s March to the Sea the south’s railroads were torn to pieces, necessitating rebuilding. The Union did so to their gauge.

The Union was also busy laying the Transcontinental RR, which was also “standard gauge.” /12

Thus western railroads (say, Utah) & southern railroads (say, Florida) were standardized by the war. Which leads us to the size of the Space Shuttle’s boosters

Manufactured by Thiokol in Utah, the story goes they passed through a tunnel on the way to the Florida launch site /12

Tunnel size is NOT “slightly wider than the track.” This confuses track gauge with “loading gauge.” Trains are plenty larger than their rails (see chart, below, from the ever excellent Douglas self-serve site:). douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOC…) /13

As anyone in Europe who sees American or Russian standard gauge trains can attest, they can be PLENTY large. Care just needs to be made w/ trackside infrastructure & being too wide & top heavy. Wider track actually = more stability (hence Brunel’s broad-gauge obsession).
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So. Spacecraft rockets are limited by infrastructure & transport, but not to the extent that they match train track, which in turn has nothing other than coincidence in common w/ Roman chariots & “the width of a horse’s ass.”

But don’t be upset if you liked the story! /15

It’s enjoyable because it makes a good tale. It links seemingly unrelated topics in a humorous, folksy way, which makes it approachable.

This is what we should strive for to some extent as historians. Perhaps not “folksy,” but you get the idea. /16

The job of a public historian or interpreter is to make history relevant, to tell the stories of the past. Being articulate & interesting helps.

But we are also grounded in facts, which are just as interesting as a good but false, made-up story, appealing as it may be. /17

If you like this analysis (read: obsessive rant) about the history of track gauges you can follow me for more nonsense.

I’d say check out my Soundcloud but let’s be honest, I don’t have one. Do Victrolas count?