Hello Kees,

 BF>>    What I find interesting is that the USA was eager to have their
 BF>> Independence War to get separated from Great Britain, but once they got
 BF>> it, they hung on to a lot of GB specific things like measurements -- but
 BF>> even changed them. A US ounce is not equal to a UK ditto and neither is
 KvE> a
 BF>> US gallon. Yeah, well, USA surely is a very interesting conglomerate of
 BF>> people and ideas.  8-)

 KvE> I particularly like the measurement of oil production in barrels/day.
 KvE> Now I wonder how many barrels could be loaded on a waggon, so I can
express
 KvE> the size of an oilcarrier (ship) as a number of waggon loads.

You can put up to 8 42-gallon barrels of oil on a wagon.
Teams of horses would pull the wagons carrying the barrels
to reach railroad stations and docks.

You could put anything you wanted inside the barrels, not
just oil.  Could be fish, or other goods.

You could put 20 42-gallon barrels on a barge or railroad flatcar.
Bigger ones were unmanageable and smaller ones were not as profitable.

And then there is Nellie Bly's 55 gallon steel drum.
Showed the world not everything had to be made of wood.

--Lee

-- 
Big Or Small We Lay Them All

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