没有可以找到的证据证明这是真实的。
www.railway.org站点上的D.Gabe Gabriel的一篇文章中说，这个故事在二战后已经短期存在过了，但没有史实支持这个故事的观点。 罗马车辙，根据Gabriel得说法，不是为战马，而是为狭窄的、手拉式得货运马车。虽然很多地方都可以看到这种车辙，但Gabriel质疑它们能在罗马军队覆灭了1400后的英国铁轨规则上扮演角色。 这个故事中一个证据是，车辙的宽度受到马车需要的影响，为了使马车的轮子宽度和并排拉车的马的宽度一致。 Gabriel指出，在梵蒂冈博物馆有一个塑像by Franzoni，被视为是描述罗马战车最精确的。两匹马比它们后面的战车和战车轮子更宽。
四英尺八英寸半的标准是起源于哪里的呢？Gabroel说，他来自于英国人George Stephenson.
在英格兰，二轮货运马车跑到轨道上应用于煤矿间已经很多年了，但是煤矿到煤矿间轨道的宽度是变化的，因为它们不共用轨道。 Stephenson是最早研究在二轮马车上加一个蒸汽引擎，以推进马车前行到更远的人中的一个。 他为一些不同轨道标准的煤矿工作，并简单地选择了四英尺八英寸宽来做他的轨道。他后来决定做另一个六英寸的东西更容易。再后来，在已经存在他指定得1200英里铁路得基础上，他被征询建设一些铁路轨道，同时大英不列颠提出了一个更广泛的铁路计划，由此“Stephenson 衡量”成为一个标准。
有趣的是，四英尺八英寸半宽在美国并不一直是一个标准。根据美国商业历史和传记百科全书记载，在内战开始时，起码有超过20个不同的标准。从3英寸到6英寸，当然四英尺八英寸半宽是被使用得最广泛得标准。战争期间，任何通过轨道运输的供应不得不手动转移，当一辆车从一个轨道标准遇到另一个轨道标准时，同时有超过4000英里的新轨道被架设、奠定了规范过程。后来，国会颁布了四英尺八英寸半宽为跨越铁路的标准。
原文： There is no evidence that we could find that this is true.
In an article on www.railway.org by D. Gabe Gabriel says this tale has existed since shortly after World War II but that history does not support the claims of the story. The Roman ruts, according to Gabriel, were not for chariots but for narrow, hand-pulled carts.
Although there are many places where the ruts are visible, Gabriel questions that they played a role in English railroad standards 1400 years after the last Roman legions.
One of the claims of the eRumor is that the width of the ruts was affected by the need to make the chariot and it’s wheels the same width as the combined rears of the horses pulling them.
Gabriel says there’s a statue by Franzoni in the Vatican museum that is regarded as the most accurate known depiction of a Roman chariot. The two horses are wider than the chariot and the chariot wheels behind them.
Where did the four-foot, eight-and-a-half-inch standard originate? Gabriel says it was from a Englishman named George Stephenson. Carts on rails had been used in mines in England for years, but the width of the rails varied from mine to mine since they didn’t share tracks. Stephenson was the one who started experimenting with putting a steam engine on the carts so there would be propulsion to pull them along. He had worked with several mines with differing gauges and simply chose to make the rails for his project 4-foot, eight inches wide. He later decided that adding another six inches made things easier. He was later consulted for constructing some rails along a roadway and by the time broader plans for railroads in Great Britain were proposed, there were already 1200 miles of his rails so the “Stephenson gauge” became the standard.
Interestingly, the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch width has not always been the standard in the U.S. According to the Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography, at the beginning of the Civil War, there were more than 20 different gauges ranging from 3 to 6 feet, although the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch was the most widely used. During the war, any supplies transported by rail had to be transferred by hand whenever a car on one gauge encountered track of another gauge and more than 4,000 miles of new track was laid during the war to standardize the process. Later, Congress decreed that the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch standard would be used for transcontinental railway.
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