2001-03-08
Louis,
Would they really refer to it as 1435 mm or more likely 143 cm? Would that
5 mm really make a difference, especially in common speech? I always
thought the French spoke more in centimetres instead of millimetres.
Do you know any Railroad people who you can ask what the track pitch is?
Han,
I don't think the BWMA actually states that the French use the term 4 pieds
8-1/2 pouces, but what they are trying to say is the French and others use
the same gauge as the British do and what ever they call it in millimetres,
it is still an imperial gauge. But, their lack of telling the whole story,
like not mentioning that livre and pfund are 500 g and not 454 g, or that
German pipe thread pitches may be copies of imperial sizes and the names are
imperial, but those are just trade names that don't reflect actual
dimensions. I'm sure Germans know as much about imperial as Americans know
about metric.
By withholding key information they let their followers draw their own
conclusions. But, if the conclusions are ever proved wrong, the BWMA can
say we never said it was so, we just said it was such and such. It was
others who concluded wrong.
They are not lying, just using deception to their advantage. They know
their followers mentality and use it to their fullest. Ignorance of the
masses is their ally, and they know it.
John
Keiner ist hoffnungsloser versklavt als derjenige, der irrtümlich glaubt
frei zu sein.
There are none more hopelessly enslaved then those who falsely believe they
re free!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis JOURDAN" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, 2001-03-08 17:28
Subject: [USMA:11514] Re: NPT vs. PG
At 20:12 +0100 01/03/8, Han Maenen wrote:
>The BWMA also claims that French railway engineers habitually refer to
>standard gauge not as 1435 mm but as 4 pieds 8-1/2 pouces. It would be
>shocking and crazy if that should be true and it would be a major coup for
>the BWMA. I hope that some French railway engineer just and only used it
>while explaining its origins to the public on TV and that the BWMA turned
>that into a piece of disinformation. Why any metric trained engineer should
>prefer this broken foot-inch value to the neat metric value of 1435 mm is
>absolutely beyond me.
I know a number of French railway engineers : I can assure you that
when they refer to "standard gauge", they mean 1435 mm ; none of them
is aware that this is equivalent to 4 feet 8 1/2 inches.
BTW, the "non-standard" gauge is ... 1,00 m : many local railways
were built on that gauge, called "voie métrique".
For an exhaustive list of railroad gauges in the world, go to
http://turksib.com/gauges/index-e.html
Louis
