I have always been a fan of the Santa Fe Railroad. I really like the old color scheme of Red and Silver with Yellow accents. I like it better than the Gold on Blue color scheme. I recently was fortunate enough to travel to New Mexico and watch the Santa Fe shipyards in Gallup and the trains running east and west on the dual tracks that run from Gallup to Mesita along Interstate 40 which runs through central New Mexico. I photographed the east-bound trains from I-40 at almost identical speeds.

I happened to find this abandoned caboose along side the road at a visitors center. I couldn't help but to climb on and pose for a picture.

Public safety officials in six states will join Conrail in promoting safety at railroad-highway grade crossings on special train trips this spring and summer. The trips are part of Conrail's support of the national Operation Lifesaver program, which is a public education campaign designed to reduce the number of accidents, deaths and injuries at crossings on or along railroad tracks. It is sponsored cooperatively by federal, state and local government agencies, highway safety organizations, and the nation's railroads.

Grade crossing accidents killed 471 and injured 1,552 people last year throughout the U.S. In addition, 472 people were killed and 467 injured in trespassing incidents on railroad property.

One feature of the train is a television camera mounted in the locomotive engineer's cab. From monitors placed throughout passenger cars on the train, those aboard can see motorists try to beat the train across the tracks. Law enforcement officials in patrol cars following the train's route will cite drivers who attempt to beat it across the tracks. An officer riding with the engineer will be in radio contact so that vehicle license numbers and descriptions can be reported to the patrol cars.

Passenger cars on the train include a dome car, restored Pullman observation cars dating as far back as 1911, and a coach.

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? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English people build them 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 that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd 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 old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United State standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs 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. The Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two horses.

Last updated August 10, 2005