Rolf Mantel <news@hartig-mantel.de> wrote:
> Am 16.03.2022 um 10:55 schrieb Roger Merriman:
>> Rolf Mantel <news@hartig-mantel.de> wrote:
>>> Am 15.03.2022 um 19:36 schrieb Roger Merriman:
>>>> Tom Kunich <cyclintom@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> On Tuesday, March 15, 2022 at 10:09:38 AM UTC-7, Roger Merriman wrote:
>>>>>> Tom Kunich <cycl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> On Monday, March 14, 2022 at 8:12:21 PM UTC-7, Joy Beeson wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Sat, 12 Mar 2022 13:02:52 -0500, Frank Krygowski
>>>>>>>> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I very specifically thought "I'll be OK because it can't possibly go
>>>>>>>>> straight up. This is an old road, and a horse pulling a wagon could
>>>>>>>>> never make it straight up. There must be switchbacks."
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I was wrong. It was straight up. I don't know the grade, but I remember
>>>>>>>>> being in my touring bike's granny gear and still needing to stand to
>>>>>>>>> complete the climb.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> So I guess my "horse and wagon" thinking was backwards.
>>>>>>>> Was the climb ever interrupted by flat spots about the length of a
>>>>>>>> horse and wagon?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I was told that such spots in the roads up the eastern cliffs of the
>>>>>>>> Helderburgs were called "horse breaks". Or it could have been
>>>>>>>> "brakes".
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> "Break", as in "take a break", seems most logical, but "brake" has
>>>>>>>> many meanings. This is, alas, unGoogleable.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Just like "section house". I was told that farmhouses with half-mile
>>>>>>>> lanes marked the sites of "section houses" -- houses built in the
>>>>>>>> middle of a homesteaded "section" (mile square), to minimize the
>>>>>>>> distance the farmer had to walk to tend fields, harvest firewood and
>>>>>>>> game, etc. But railroad "section houses" are much more recent and
>>>>>>>> numerous.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> We're back to farming whole sections, but patched together from the
>>>>>>>> farms of widows and orphans.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I really ought to crosspost to alt.usage.english .
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Joy, I can tell you for absolute certainty that you CANNOT get horsedrawn
>>>>>>> wagons to go up anything steeper than a steady 7%. This isn't to say that
>>>>>>> this cannot have a short 8% grade but roads going up a hill in a straight
>>>>>>> line are walking roads and not for horses. Like bicycles, horses are a
>>>>>>> flat ground device that can only be forced up hills. That is why wild
>>>>>>> horses are found on plains and not usually in hilly terrain.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> In the wild yes they came from the plains of Asia, this said horses are
>>>>>> quite capable of hilly ground, unlike for example machines which will
>>>>>> struggle beyond a point.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Where I grew up the woods remained even with the industrial Revolution
>>>>>> starting around them, due to the slope of the gorge, ie no mechanical way
>>>>>> to cut and then transport the trees, on such a slope.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Folks do use horses on similar areas for managed woods as the horses (cart
>>>>>> horses) can cope with the slope, and nimble and strong enough to haul
>>>>>> either the trees or the cut wood out.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> There are even breeds intended for steep rough land, Welsh Cob for example
>>>>>> is a sure footed horse that can cope, with the Welsh hill which though not
>>>>>> high are steep.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> American is in terms of roads/tracks and horses etc, was only just before
>>>>>> the industrial revolution, so I’d suspect a lot are intended with that in
>>>>>> mind.
>>>>>
>>>>> Just to remind you, I am 77 and in my youth I still saw horses and carts.
>>>>> The Milk was early on still delivered that way until they designed and
>>>>> build signature Milk Wagons. San Francisco early on attempted to use
>>>>> horses to haul materials around to build houses etc. on the rather steep
>>>>> hillsides and were not a whole lot successful. So they designed streets
>>>>> of more than 7% to use Cable Cars and later most of the city was and
>>>>> still is served with Trolley cars. Buses are now beginning to take over
>>>>> since initial costs of Trolley construction is quite high. Here is an
>>>>> article where a horse-drawn cart not in the rain but merely on wet roads
>>>>> slid down the hill and killed both horses. For those of you unfamiliar
>>>>> with horses, their owners soon think of them the same way as a loyal dog
>>>>> and before I got so tall horses used to come over to the fences to be
>>>>> pet and scratched.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Steep-S-F-hills-overcome-with-Hallidie-s-cable-6295164.php
>>>>>
>>>> You maybe old but not that old, most of the road around where you are, will
>>>> be at most be a few hundred years old, and will predate you.
>>>>
>>>> American existence (ie after Columbus) is during and after the industrial
>>>> revolution, only a fairly short period pre industrial.
>>>>
>>>> And yes horses simply aren’t strong enough for that sort of loads, unless
>>>> helped, ie such as canals.
>>>>
>>>> Pre industrial roads, the loads where much less, and considering how few
>>>> miles you reasonably could do in a day, going around a hill was less
>>>> attractive than going over, at such low speeds direct within reason was
>>>> best.
>>>>
>>>> And there where other reasons traveling was risky business, hence lot of
>>>> the old roads route along the ridge edge so there are no nasty surprises!
>>>>
>>>> It’s particularly noticeable if you have the old and new road side by side.
>>>>
>>>> Snake Pass between Manchester (Glossip) to Sheffield is one such example
>>>> where the new road (1821) climbs up following the contours of the land,
>>>> where as the old (Roman) road takes both a more direct route to the extent
>>>> of dropping from one side of the valley ridge line to cross and climb on to
>>>> the ridge of the next.
>>>
>>> I'd rather re-phrase it as "military roads tend to take a direct route"
>>> while peacetime roads tend to be localized connections, using existing
>>> bridges. The best known military roads in Europe are
>>> 1) roman roads
>>> 2) Napleonic roads
>>
>> Roman yes, they did built new roads and paved/cleared sight lines, but they
>> also did to this to existing Roads, which is more common than folks might
>> imagine.
>>
>> It’s quite probable that the “Roman” Snake Pass existed before the Romans
>> as generally old maps named old roads as Roman. And places such as
>> Manchester predate the Romans.
>>
>> So no it’s not just military roads far from it, the Military aspect was the
>> surface and width so you could travel at relative speed. Plus maintenance
>> of both the surface and clearing the sides.
>
> Comparison of road networks in Germany and France clearly show that this
> is not true.
>
> Look at an important non-military trade road in Germany, like "Kasseler
> Landstraße" (B3) between Göttingen and Kassel: Zig-zag no end.
> https://goo.gl/maps/EU9w1FAnWmv8Jn8Y7
>
> A former Napoleonic national road on similarly hilly terrain in France,
> N89 (re-named to D1089 after building a parallel motorway) is a lot
> straigher, with only soft bends.
> https://goo.gl/maps/bo7jC2id4jwBocKo8
>
> This is one reason why between 1950 and 1990, Germany was building so
> many more motorways than France: the French National Road network was
> fast enough for long-distance travel (2 hours per 100 miles was
> realistic in the countryside), so motorways were only needed for
> capacity reasons while the German national road network was lacking both
> in speed and in capacity (3-4 hours per 100 miles was expected in the
> countryside).
>
> Rolf
>

My “old” roads are 2000+ not Napoleonic road ie stuff built during the
industrial revolution, which roads started to get built with lovely
switchbacks, Snake pass was built around this time as where number of the
TDF climbs or rather improved.

Roger Merriman