History of Dundee - The Tay Bridge Disaster

The Tay Bridge Disaster

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In 1878 a new railway bridge over the Tay was opened, connecting the rail network at Dundee to Fife and Edinburgh. Its completion was commemorated in verse by William McGonagall. About two years after completion, the bridge collapsed under the weight of a full train of passengers during a fierce storm. All on board the train were lost and some bodies were never recovered. McGonagall's The Tay Bridge Disaster recounts the tragedy in verse. perhaps one of his best known poems. The public inquiry of the Tay Bridge disaster in 1880 found that the bridge had been

"badly designed, badly built and badly maintained"

and Sir Thomas Bouch was blamed for the catastrophe. He had under-designed the structure and used brittle cast iron for critical components, especially the lugs which held tensioned tie bars in the towers. It was these lugs which fractured first and destabilised the towers in the high girders section. The bolt holes in the lugs were cast, and had a conical section, so all the load was concentrated at a sharp outer edge. Such conical bolt holes were used for critical horizontal strut lugs as well, and weakened the structure substantially. The towers of the high girder section were heavily loaded and were very top heavy, making then susceptible to toppling. The towers failed during the storm as the train was travelling over, and a chain reaction followed as each of the towers in the high girders section collapsed. In 1887 the bridge was replaced by William Henry Barlow with a much more substantial bridge, which was at that time the longest railway bridge in Europe, at just over 2 miles (3.2 km) long (Europe's longest bridge today is the Oresund Bridge).