The Story of the Pony Express.

This is a short book explaining about the formation of the Pony Express. Information on the Pony Express is limited. A large part of the book relates to the beginning of the civil war and California's part in it. It gives the names of the riders, some of their exploits and the finances surrounding the whole operation. 

The Pony Express left a lasting legacy as a symbol of determination, courage, and the pioneering spirit that characterized the American West during that era. Today, it is remembered as one of the most daring and iconic ventures in the history of American mail delivery.

In the American Civil War, horse and mule casualties far surpassed even the total number of soldiers that died during the conflict. And was the fate of soldiers, more perished from disease or exhaustion than from bullets.

Old and New

    Every weekend, our newspaper has a section on the first world war - stories, photographs. The section makes me think about previous wars. Before photography, there were paintings. Think about those from the Napoleonic Wars. Large, vivid in colors, seldom dark or morose. Wind blowing capes, horses, one foot in the air, the general, brave and daunting, in front of his troops.
    Quite a contrast from the first world war photos, with their singular color of black and white, no brave general leading his troops, but troops dragging through mud, falling over dead and dying friends. Horses pulling gun carriages, straining at the load, starving, never to see green fields again.
    The Napoleonic Wars had the same grief, the same mud with the generals at the back of their troops, and the soldiers dying in the mud.

The Horses Ass

RAILROAD TRACKS 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 English
expatriates designed the US railroads.


Why did the English 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 had used for building wagons,

which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that
particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other
spacing, the wagon wheels would
break on some of the old, long
distance roads in England , because
that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long
distance roads in Europe (including England )

for their legions. Those roads have been

used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
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.
Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of

4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original
specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Bureaucracies live forever.


The next time you are handed a

specification/procedure/process
and wonder 'What horse's ass
came up with this?', you may be
exactly right. Imperial Roman
army chariots were made just
wide enough to accommodate
the rear ends of two war horses.
(Two horses' butts.) 

Now - the twist to the story:
A Space Shuttle sitting on its

launch pad has 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 a factory in Utah .

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,
and 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!