Aug 20, 2024
Puzzler time!
This one has to do with railroads.
So we had a guy go out and measure the distance between railroad tracks. That is what we asked for.
We asked him to measure from the middle of the track to the middle of the other track, and find out what that distance is, because we wanted to know if there was any relevance to the distance.
He couldn't find any railroad tracks. But he did find subway tracks. He noted that the distance between tracks, between the middle of the track and the middle of the parallel track, is, on average, four feet, 11 and three quarter inches.
And I thought, what kind of a number is that? Four feet, 11 and three quarter inches?
And the puzzler question is very simply is, where did they get this four feet, 11 and three quarter inches figure? And feel free to go back in history as far as necessary, because they have this in England, but we want to know where they got it from too.
Good luck.
So answer time.
Train tracks.
Where did the British get this four feet, 11 and three quarter inches measurement for their train tracks?
Here is the answer.
The British railroads got this number from their carriage makers. Carriages, in fact, used to have wheels that were four feet 11 and three quarter inches apart. (Or four feet, 8 and a half inches, depending on which historical source you read.)
So why would they choose such a number for their carriages, and not some other number?
They used that number to match the ruts in the roads that were already there.
And why were the ruts already there?
There were already there from the Roman chariots that first traveled the countryside in England. Those chariots wore ruts in the dirt roads. When the Brits started making their own carriages, they made them to fit those ruts because if you made them any smaller or any bigger, you would break the axel.
Amazing, huh?
