Is it true a Roman horse butt lead to the gauge of modern railroads?

Photo by Daniel Abadia on Unsplash

The gauge (spacing between rails) on a railroad in the U.S. is four feet, eight and a half inches. This is a very peculiar measurement. Surely four feet or five feet would have made more sense. So how did this come about? The railroad/railway was invented in Britain, so British expats were called upon to build most American railroads, and they built it the way they were used to.

Now we Brits are peculiar, but not so eccentric that we would be that arbitrary on the distance between rails. The story continues that the rails followed the gauge of street trams, the horse-drawn vehicles that preceded steam railways. It makes sense that the companies that built street trams would have the factories and tooling to produce the first railway carriages. And before that, these companies manufactured regular horse-drawn carriages that travelled the roads. Think stagecoaches.

Romans

And here’s where the Romans come in. When they invaded Britain around two thousand years ago, they naturally continued to build their incredibly straight and paved roads for which they are famous. Indeed, so durable we can see them today in many countries of Europe, including Britain. Skilled engineers, those Romans, and holding such a widespread empire required swift movement of troops from town to town.