page_title: Tay Bridge
section_title: Catastrophic failure
hierarchical_section_title: Tay Bridge / First bridge / Catastrophic failure
caption_attribution_description: English: Below the Victorian-era Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, piers showing where the bridge's predecessor rested before its catastrophic failure in 1879.
context_page_description: The Tay Bridge carries the railway across the Firth of Tay in Scotland between Dundee and the suburb of Wormit in Fife. Its span is 2.75 miles. It is the second bridge to occupy the site.
  Plans for a bridge over the Tay to replace the train ferry service emerged in 1854, but the first Tay Bridge did not open until 1878. It was a lightweight lattice design of relatively low cost with a single track. On 28 December 1879, the bridge suddenly collapsed in high winds. The incident is one of the greatest bridge-related engineering disasters to have occurred. An enquiry determined that the bridge was insufficiently engineered to cope with high winds.
  It was replaced by a second bridge constructed of iron and steel with a double-track parallel to the remains of the first bridge. Work commenced on 6 July 1883 and the bridge was opened in 1887. The new bridge was subject to extensive testing by the Board of Trade, whose report was favourable. In 2003, the bridge was strengthened and refurbished, winning a British Construction Industry Engineering Award to mark the scale and difficulty of the project.
context_section_description: On the night of 28 December 1879 at 7:15 p.m., the bridge collapsed after its central spans gave way during high winter gales. A train with six carriages carrying seventy-five passengers and crew, crossing at the time of the collapse, plunged into the icy waters of the Tay. All seventy-five people on board were killed. The disaster stunned the whole country and sent shock waves through the Victorian engineering community. The ensuing enquiry revealed that the design of the bridge had not accommodated for high winds. At the time of the collapse, a gale estimated at force ten or eleven (Tropical Storm force winds: 55–72 mph/80–117 km/h) had been blowing down the Tay estuary at right angles to the bridge. The engine itself (North British Railway no. 224) was salvaged from the river and subsequently restored for service on the railway.
  The collapse of the bridge, despite having only opened nineteen months earlier and having been passed as safe by the Board of Trade, had a long-term impact on wider society. According to some commenters, it is still regarded as having been the most notorious bridge disaster to have ever occurred in the British Isles. The disaster was commemorated in "The Tay Bridge Disaster", one of the best-known verse efforts of William McGonagall. Today, the stumps of the original bridge piers are still visible above the surface of the Tay even at high tide.
  In 2005 a new musical play by Scottish playwright Mike Gibb with music by Mairi Paton titled Five Pound and Twa Bairns premiered in Dundee. It focuses on three fictional women from very different backgrounds who lose men in the disaster. It has gone on to have several further productions including three separate sold out runs at Dundee Rep Theatre.
caption: Northern segment of the second Tay Bridge, showing stumps of the original bridge's piers poking above the Tay
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