Ilya Mourometz

legendary Russian folk hero
the last of the bogatyrs

Ilya Mourometz existed during the 10th or 11th century and was a bogatyr ("warrior") in the service of Prince Vladimir, the last Scandinavian to rule Kiev near the end of the 10th century.  Over time he has become rather like a Paul Bunyan figure in Russian culture,  but the real Ilya Mourometz did have many adventures in the service of Prince Vladimir (called "The Sun"), who was the first to consolidate Russia, and built many fortresses to protect it.

He is the subject/inspiration and namesake of Reinhold Gliere's monumental Symphony No. 3, as well was the four engined bomber plane by Igor Sikorsky, seen below.

Sikorsky Ilya Mourometz V
Nation: Russia
Manufacturer: R.B.V.Z. (Russo-Baltic Railway Factories)
Type: Heavy Bomber
Entered Combat: 1915
Engine: four Sunbeam 8-cyl. liquid-cooled inline Vs, 150 hp (each)
Wingspan: 97' 9" (29.8 m)
Length: 56' 1.5" (17.1 m)
Height: 15' 6" (4.72 m)
Weight (Empty):
Weight (Gross): 10,117 lbs. (4,589 kg)
Speed: 75 mph (121 km/h)
Ceiling: 9,840 ft. (3,000 m)
Endurance: 5 hrs.
Range:
Armament: 3-7 machine guns
Crew: 4-7

Ilya In Action

On Wheelbases, Julius Caesar and eventually, Railroad Tracks

Julius Caesar

Shortly before he was stabbed by Brutus et others in 44 B.C., Julius Caesar visited his new possessions in Greece, in particular the military base at the Isthmus of Corinth. He observed the stone rutted cartway in operation there to transfer specially-built, mostly military boats from the Gulf of Corinth to the Saronikos Kolpos (gulf in Greek), avoiding some 400 miles of sailing in dangerous waters roundabout the Peloponnisos.

The cartway had been built with carved stones roughly 5 feet apart, with each stone having a Greek letter carved on it for some mysterious reason.

This was a fairly meticulous-built guideway, carts and all, though very little is known of who designed it & when, though it is pretty clear why. Jules, being pretty swift about engineering if not assassins and astrology, saw that the key was that all the cart/boats which used it were STANDARDIZED by the Hellenic military for wheel and axle dimensions.

He applied this idea to a growing problem in the Empire -- chariots that had to slow in towns because the ruts were all over the place. His edict for standardized rut widths lasted a long time, and it is hard to argue with the dimensions.

1 - U.S. track gauge based on UK track gauge. True. While most U.S. railroads were designed by U.S. engineers, not British expatriates, a number of early lines were built to fit standard-gauge locomotives manufactured by English railroad pioneer George Stephenson.

2 - UK railway track gauge based on width of earlier tramways used to haul coal. More or less true. Although tramway width varied widely among regions, those in the coal district in the north of England, where Stephenson began his work, used a gauge of four-foot-eight.

3 - North England tramway width based on wagon-wheel spacing. Not literally true--there was no standard wagon-wheel spacing. However, wagons and their wheels averaged five feet in width, since this size would conveniently fit behind a team of draft animals. The North England tramway gauge apparently had been arrived at by starting with an overall track width of five feet and using rails that were two inches wide. Five feet minus four inches for the rails equals four-foot-eight. (I'm skipping some complicated history here, but that's the gist of it.) Stephenson later widened the tracks a half inch for practical reasons, making the standard gauge four feet, eight and a half inches. While this is an "exceedingly odd number," it derives from a basic track width of five feet, which is not odd at all.

What about Roman war chariots and rutted roads? Roman "rutways," many of which were purposely built to standard dimensions, were close to modern railroad tracks in width. For example, the rutways at the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum averaged four-foot-nine center to center, with a gauge of maybe four-foot-six. But there's no direct connection between Roman rutways and 18th-century tramways. The designers of each were dealing with a similar problem, namely hauling wheeled vehicles behind draft animals. So it's not surprising they came up with similar results.

Another version of this legend adds the rococo touch that the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) used on the space shuttle are manufactured at a Thiokol plant (I presume in Utah), then shipped to Florida by rail for final assembly at the launch site. The rail line passes through one or more tunnels en route, and the SRB pieces had to be made small enough so they'd fit through the tunnel bore. Thus, the legend triumphantly concludes, the dimensions of one of our most advanced vehicles was determined by the size of one of our most ancient!

True? Again, yes and no. A NASA spokesperson confirms that railroad tunnel dimensions were a constraint that had to be taken into account when designing the SRBs. However, tunnel dimensions are less a function of track gauge than of rolling stock width. U.S. railroad cars are quite a bit wider than those in England because parallel tracks are placed farther apart. (I'm talking tracks, not rails here, capisce?) As a consequence, U.S. railroad tunnels typically are wider too. So you can't really make the case that the size of the space shuttle's boosters was determined by the width of a couple horses' butts.

I came across the following in the book Gordian Knot: Political Gridlock on the Information Highway by W. Russell Neuman, Lee McKnight, and Richard Jay Solomon:

As an accident of history most road carriages in the the Middle Ages inherited the old Roman cart gauge of approximately 4 feet, 8-1/2 inches. Julius Caesar set this width under Roman law so that vehicles could traverse Roman villages and towns without getting caught in stone ruts of differing widths. Over the centuries this became the traditional standard.

Richard Solomon, the source of this bit, has elaborated in a message posted to the net that Caesar decided on standard gauge after seeing a "grooveway" at the isthmus of Corinth in Greece. This was a purposely built set of ruts used to guide the wheels on carts carrying goods being transshipped across the isthmus. Prof. Solomon says he personally measured an excavated portion of this ancient grooveway and found it had a gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches.

Coincidence? That was my reaction. But this claim about an edict by Julius Caesar was something new--it's not mentioned in any of the standard histories of Roman roads I've seen.

One last thing. I have heard tell of certain wheel ruts having a gauge of you-know-what at the gate to an old Roman fort called Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall in the north of England. Legend has it that George Stephenson based the gauge he used for his locomotives on the width of these ruts. Here's what Housesteads by James Crow (Batsford, London, 1995, pp. 33-34) has to say on the subject:

The gauge between the ruts is very similar to that adopted by George Stephenson for the Stockton to Darlington railway in 1837 and a 'Wall myth' developed that he took this gauge from the newly excavated east gate. There is a common link, but it is more prosaic and the 'coincidence' is explained by the fact that the dimension common to both was that of a cart axle pulled by two horses in harness (about 1.4m or 4ft 8in). This determined both the Roman gauge and Stephenson's, which derived from the horsedrawn wagon ways of south Northumberland and County Durham coalfields.

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