11th October 2022 - Escapees

Thought for the day :"I had the roast Pelican in an exotic restaurant. The food was great but the bill was enormous."

Bit of rain but tried some more fencing to keep Toby in - failed!!

He is just pushing through the hedge by the gate 

So far he has not decided to jump the gate so that is still a bonus...

We shall see if the rain keeps off tomorrow 

Meanwhile the apples and the Crab apples are just blooming 

Susie starting her dehydrating 

Seems that they need more than the recommended period of time - we shall see...

In other escapee news - Sooty's chick are escapees as well - these decided that they would be peacocks...

In other news - took a trip up to Johnny's Cabin to see what Chris ad managed to do with clearing the area and the new flowers are pushing up already - should be a fine area when blooming ..

In other news:

And for posterity and so I can search for it in the future 
Railway Tracks | Railway sizes | shuttle train | why track size |

One of my favourite after dinner anecdotes

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?

Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads. Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used. So, why did 'they' use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same 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 more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, 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 (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And what about the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk 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 this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' 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, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in 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, and 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.

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 so another day ..

Cheers !