> Was the M.P. value a genuine decimal figure? If so, how was it physically
> measured?
It is not all that hard to do. Just measure the distance from the milepost
using multiple measurements of a long tape or standard surveying chains.
Railroad Civil engineers measured accurate distances all the time. Once you
have the number of feet from the milepost just divide that by 5280 to come up
with the decimal equivalent. A school child can do it.
When I was injured in the 1990s and on "light duty" my assignment was to go out
on the road each day to a different siding or junction and measure the precise
feet between such things as signals, switch points, clearance points,
automobile crossings, etc. The information was to be used to print "guide
books" for he train crews so they knew where their trains would fit and where
they would not.
To do the actual measuring I was given a calibrated "surveyor's wheel" which
was just a spoked wheel about 2 ft in diameter and had a mechanical counter
attached to it to count each foot it moved. There were a couple of homemade
rail guides on each side to make it easy to keep the wheel on top of the rail
as you pushed it along. I walked a LOT of track pushing that thing along the
top of the rails. Most of the Q from Gillette, WY to Huntley, MT. Yard tracks
too.
With the right counter design and wheel size a similar device could be made to
directly readout in 1/100ths or 1/1000ths of a mile. It isn't exactly rocket
science.
AK
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