Rupert,
John Mitchell's response is correct from a railroad standpoint. Here in the U.S. a lot of our Interstate highways now show mileposts in tenths of a mile. This changed started to appear about 10 years ago. The purpose is to help emergency responders better pinpoint the location of people who need help. While there has been an effort to promote the use of the metric system in the U.S. since about the 1970s, it hasn't been very effective. The metric system certainly is used in some fields such as medical and scientific, but for everyday life, most people remain on the British system of pounds and feet. Old habits die hard. When we were first trying to change to the metric system, there was a story going around about a European country (possibly Sweden) that had converted years before, but it was said the the wife still sent her husband to the store to purchase a pound of butter! I doubt Americans will ever change.
Bill Barber Gravois Mills, MO Sun Mar 24, 2013 7:17 pm (PDT) . Posted by:Milepost distances and track chart notations were shown with two decimal
places such as M.P. 123.45.
If you were using the metric system (kilometres) that's easy to calculate
with 1000 metres to the kilometre and tape measures marked accordingly, so
0.01 km equals 10 metres. With imperial measurements, 0.01 of a mile equals
17.6 yards (17 yards 1 foot and 9.6 inches, or 52.8 feet) - a bit hard to
measure.
Was the M.P. value a genuine decimal figure? If so, how was it physically
measured?
Rupert Gamlen
Auckland NZ
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