Still pulling up rail

I was looking around to find you some info on your tracks.

You could spend years reading up on this stuff.

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I did find this amusing!

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts,
which everyone else had to match for fear of
destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they
were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4
feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original
specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you
are handed a specification and wonder what horse's
ass came up with it, you may be exactly right,
because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made
just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two
war horses. 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 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.

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!



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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26266.msg184400.html#msg184400

All track were based on the wagon wheels.

That was the point.

Yep your right, No Romans there.

But everyone that came across the pond had roman roots.

You see it in our language.

You see it in our Streets.

You see it in our coins.

Greek and Roman had a most profound influence on who we are. 

Have you found any tracks intact?

Can You measure the distance between tracks?

I'm thinking those are 3ft tracks.

It would have been for logging?

Goods transport.



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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26266.msg184419.html#msg184419

Looks like the stuff we find at some of the old mines (medium size producers big enough to warrant carts and tracks but not big enough to warrant really heavy duty equipment) out here.  Takes about a 3 to 4 inch spike, if I'm not mistaken (although a 2" is possible)

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26266.msg184429.html#msg184429

Homefire, I guess narrow gauge is 1 horses ass? Hilarious!

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26266.msg184505.html#msg184505

Captnbad, Nice rail. I'm working a 1890's Florida lumbering site as well. In addition to the main line spikes, I've found two other spike sizes. Three and a half and 5 inches. In fact I found a 5 incher today. the woods are full of the narrow gauge spikes. Occasionaly I come across a piece of rail but nothing as large as the one you found. We had a severe storm several years ago that uprooted trees all over the neighborhood. A laurl oak about 12 inches in diameter had a narrow gauge rail grown in the roots. I keep some heavy railroad iron for future projects. Frogs come in handy for all sorts of things.  The only 2 1/2 inch spike I've seen came out of a 1935 gold mine in Montana. Weather is dry there and it was in good condition. 

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26266.msg184513.html#msg184513