There Are No Fish Under The Ice!
A blonde woman notices the popularity of ice fishing in Silicon Valley, and decides to try it for herself. Determined to take the sport up properly, she heads to the library and reads, not one, but three books on ice fishing from cover to cover. Armed with a list of ice fishing gear, she heads to the nearest sporting goods store to pick out top-notch equipment.
The next day, the woman heads to the nearest frozen pond and begins to set up the stool she had purchased. Settling in, she reaches for her saw and begins to cut a hole through the ice.
Booming from above comes a voice: “THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE!!”
Jumping back, the woman looks all around, but she’s alone on the ice.
A bit disturbed, she moves about 20 feet down the pond, sets up her stool, and begins to saw again.
Again comes the voice: “THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE!!”
Once again, she looks around, but just as before, there’s not a soul in sight. She decides to move clear to the other end of the pond, as far from the voice as possible.
This time, just as she settles down on the stool, before she has even reached for the saw, she hears the booming voice again: “THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE!!”
Trembling now, she calls out in a timid voice, “Is that you, Lord?”
“NO”, replies the voice, “I’M THE SHARK’S ICE HOCKEY RINK MANAGER.”
Why did the English build ’em 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 as they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
OK! Why did the wagons use that wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that’s the spacing of the ruts.
Thus we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 ft 8 1/2 in derives from the original military specification (MilSpec) for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. MisSpecs (and bureaucracies) live forever!
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, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs 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. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.
