Actually that has been mostly de-bunked.  Rail width may have generally been
influenced by the Horse’s A**” theory, however, until the American Civil War,
there were a couple of dozen track widths in use in the US.  In the North, it
was basically one size, while in the South with much less industrialization,
there were many.  For railroads, it was lucky the North won the war (not for my
SIL in Atlanta, though).

For that “winning” gauge, the rails were 5 feet, center to center, But when it
became obvious that larger rails were needed to carry larger loads, using that
measure would make the distance between the rails different for each size of
rail, so they used the measure between those 5' rails and it ended up 4’8-1/2”.

Free advice is worth what you paid for it

Ed Minch





On Apr 17, 2014, at 7:55 AM, Scott Garrison  wrote:

> I
> understand that railroad tracks in 2014 are sized to Roman chariots of
> likely 500 BC - so that's where that standard came from.