I am always amused by rail gauges being expressed as a mixture of units in the Imperial system.
Standard gauge in particular - 4ft 8 and 1/2 inches - has the contortions of two units (feet and inches) as well as whole numbers and a fraction.
When Australia started the process of converting from Imperial to Metric, and converted fully unlike the UK which got stuck halfway, one major home project builder conducted an experiment. They built two identical homes, one using standard imperial measurements and the other using the equivalent metric measurements with the builders supplied with the correct measurement tools for each project. The time taken for the two builds, allowing for weather, was the same. However the waste produced, largely through measurement and calculation errors, was significantly less in the metric project.
Builders made more mistakes when measuring and converting mixed imperial units (e.g. feet and inches and fractions) than they did when using metric - for example cutting a wooden beam too short. The Australian standard for metric measurements in the building industry forces all measurements to be in millimetres only (centimetres and metres are not allowed) and whole numbers, no decimal places.
So standard gauge track is specified as 1435mm. If a wall is to be constructed with a length of 5m then it must be specified and measured as 5000mm (no commas either).
Standard gauge in particular - 4ft 8 and 1/2 inches - has the contortions of two units (feet and inches) as well as whole numbers and a fraction.
When Australia started the process of converting from Imperial to Metric, and converted fully unlike the UK which got stuck halfway, one major home project builder conducted an experiment. They built two identical homes, one using standard imperial measurements and the other using the equivalent metric measurements with the builders supplied with the correct measurement tools for each project. The time taken for the two builds, allowing for weather, was the same. However the waste produced, largely through measurement and calculation errors, was significantly less in the metric project.
Builders made more mistakes when measuring and converting mixed imperial units (e.g. feet and inches and fractions) than they did when using metric - for example cutting a wooden beam too short. The Australian standard for metric measurements in the building industry forces all measurements to be in millimetres only (centimetres and metres are not allowed) and whole numbers, no decimal places.
So standard gauge track is specified as 1435mm. If a wall is to be constructed with a length of 5m then it must be specified and measured as 5000mm (no commas either).
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