I could digress on a variety of rail gauges, but instead, I'll bring up something else with high-tech meets low-tech.
During WW2, one of the bottlenecks in Mitsubishi's aircraft production was that the production plant was not at an airport. Planes had to be moved, unassembled, through a village, on horse-drawn wagons. There was a tight turn that often took several back & forth moves to accomplish. After that, the planes were assembled and test-flown at the airfield. I suspect this was also a design limitation on the length of fuselage and wing sections.
I think my source is Caidin and Horikoshi's book "Zero!"
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My Twilight claim to fame: I ran "Allegheny Uprising" at Allegheny College, spring of 1988.
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