Dee Bridge Disaster - Royal Commission

Royal Commission

A subsequent Royal Commission (which reported in 1849) condemned the design and the use of trussed cast iron in railway bridges, but there were a number of other failures of cast-iron railway underbridges in subsequent years, such as at the Wooton bridge collapse and the Bull bridge accident. Other failures occurred in the Staplehurst rail crash, the Inverythan crash and the Norwood Junction crash. All the structures used untrussed cast iron girders, and generally failed from blowholes or other casting defects within the bulk material, and so completely hidden from external view.

The Norwood accident in 1891 led to a review of all similar structures by Sir John Fowler, who recommended their replacement. Cast-iron had been used very successfully in The Crystal Palace of 1851 and the Crumlin Viaduct in South Wales (built in 1857), but the first Tay Rail Bridge of 1878 failed catastrophically due to its poor use of the material, putting the cast iron lugs on the columns into tension. The Tay Bridge disaster stimulated engineers to use steel, as achieved in the Forth Railway Bridge of 1890.

The bridge was later rebuilt using wrought iron after several more failed attempts to use cast iron by Stephenson.