Thanks SteveH.
Posted on 08/29/2015 4:10:26 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
Thanks SteveH.
Just to get around in those parts you have to be lean with good lungs.
- Dinka Dink and Dinka Doo -
I saw the Roman chariot account back in the 90s. Nonsense I say.
If you can find a copy of George Sturt’s 1920s book The Wheelwright’s Shop you will get a fine account of his multigeneration family business dating back to the 1700s making wagons and carts in rural England.
A real fascinating part was about how they custom built vehicles to the customer’s specification and, no, the track width was not standardized.
For example, Farmer Smith might want a vehicle that could pass through the ancient stone gate on his farm. Or maybe milkman Brown wanted one that matched the size of the shed he parked in at night.
You know, it would be nice if some British or early American researcher would measure surviving early vehicles and publish the results. Might make a good research paper for some grad student.
But now you got me curious and I gotta try to find out why that 54 1/2” gauge came to be. I should be going to bed instead-— dang it jpsb, it’s your fault :—(
Blast it that’s 56 1/2”. Proofread dang it.
Bumping #26 to real later. Thanks.
With the vastly larger trains today the gauge should be enlarged but it will never happen. We would be a hell of a lot better off now if the Great Western company had won out with their 7 foot gauge.
to real later
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to READ later ......just sloppy before posting.
“It’s amazing what one can accomplish when one has an unlimited supply of slave labor...”
Incan families paid their ‘taxes’ to the state by one member providing manual labor for the ‘state’. Though I don’t recall the exact time frame per year, I do remember it added up to less time than the average tax payer works for the state in modern USA.
The recent archaeological finds were excavated from under a Big W.
(from some Structural Engineering studies:) ...Upon encountering long span suspension bridges for the first time, the Spanish conquistadors reacted with a mixture of admiration and fear. Cieza de Leon (1553) gives an account of the Spanish forces crossing over a great suspension bridge “so strong that horses can gallop over it as though they were crossing the bridge of Alcántara, or of Cordoba.” But the Spanish reacted mostly with fear. Pedro Sancho (1543) recalled how his first crossing terrified him: …to someone unaccustomed to it, the crossing appears dangerous because the bridge sags with its long span… …so that one is continually going down until the middle is reached and from there one climbs until the far bank; and when the bridge is being crossed it trembles very much; all of which goes to the head of someone unaccustomed to it.
Pier bridge building wouldn’t work in the Andes. That’s why they developed the suspension bridge stretching further than any arched span from the Roman Arched system of bridging known in Spain in the 1500s.
Curious that the Inca never used the wheel
Judging from the switchback road pictured, they banned the wheel because they couldn’t invent brakes.
You lose one royal on one of those curves and bam, no more wheels.
Incan Mothers Against Wheels. If it saves just one child....
Very interesting! Thanks for the post.
They used slaves as well, and they did not care how many of them died completing their projects. In that way they were exactly like the Romans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Japanese, etc, etc, etc.
Interesting! Credit where credit is due.
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