Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1880-01-21

Z length the middle was the part where
dangers of many kinds had to be guar ded
against. This central portion extended
for 5000 feet, and was compose ed of grid
ers. forming Is spans of 2i5 feet each and
q feet in height above the piers on which
they rest. The rails were laid on the
bottom of these central girders, and the
sides formed kind Of lattice work from
the interlacing of the rods and beams
being purposely left open so that there
Should be less surface to offer resistance to
the wind. Practically. these 5000 feet If
central structure forme,l Il tunnel through
which the train passed. But when the
train passed the interStices left for the free
rush of the wind We're momentarlv filled
up and the side of the bridge, for the
length and height of the train, became
solid. The leverage on the supporting
columns and braces was enormous; the
strength which sulliced for ordinary
weather proved unequal to the stress of
this terrible gale; and the whole mass,
piers, grders, engine, carriages, and a
hundred human beings toppled over to-
gether into the furious flood beneath.
Not one human being escaped. 1t is
this completeness Of the catastrophe which
makes it so tragic. No one had any more
chance Of coming out alive than if the
earth had opened and swallowed it up.
The speed was probably about twenty
five miles an hour. At the moment of the
collapse the train was in an iron cage;
and train and cage together were precipi
tated more than ono hundred feet sheer
down into raging stream thirty feet deep.
For little while the people on the Dun
dee side who waited for the coming over
of the train, and who knew that some.
thing had happened because it did not
come. fancied that the driver might have
pulled up before the bridge went down.
Two or three men started to walk over to
see, but came back in panic at the fury
of the tempest. All they could make out
was that part Of the bridge was gone, but
nobody knew positively that the train had
gone with the bridge until some of the
mail-bags had been washed ashore some
miles away. The crowds who swarmed
into the Dundee station on the first rumor
of an accident-the husbands and wives,
brothers and sisters, relatives and friends
of the passengers-were kept for hours in
suspense by what one paper calls the u-
dicious silence of the railway off ,als, by
what should call the cruel callousness
common TO the official mind on such occa.
sions. So fierce was the storm that all
communication between the opposite
shores was suspended. No steamer dared
leave port. BY and by one came over
from Newport to Dundee, and the gale
having abated, the Provost, the harbor-
MASTER the railway people aud some cili-
zens of Dundee, embarked on a voyage of
discovery at about 10 O'Clock. AS they
reached the bridge the moon came out,
and by her light they first saw the ghastly
rent in the bridge-3,000 feet cut clean
out of it by the storm. A boat pulled
through but nothing could be seen of the
wreck save a huge girder or two. The
Tay had swallowed the whole, and down
to this moment. two days afterward but
one body has been recovered. Divers
have been down, but they came up again
with the report that nothing caa be seen
of the wrecked carriages. There are
quicksands all about and it is doubtful
whether anything will ever be seen, ex-
cept the bits of spintered wood, and vari-
Gus waif and strays which are floating
from hour to hour.--London Cor. ". Y.
Tribune.