Tay Rail Bridge

The Tay Rail Bridge is a railway bridge over the Firth of Tay between Wormit, Fife and the City of Dundee, both in Scotland. It crosses the river west (upstream) of the Tay Road Bridge.

The original Tay Rail Bridge was constructed in the 19th century by noted railway engineer Thomas Bouch (who received a knighthood following the bridge's completion). It was an advanced lattice-grid design, combining cast and wrought iron, then the state-of-the-art in bridge technology. Upon its completion in early 1879 it was the longest bridge in the world. The bridge was officially opened by Queen Victoria on June 1 of that year. That year, during a violent storm in the evening of December 28th a section of the bridge collapsed, wrecking a train which was running over its single track. 75 lives were lost, including Sir Thomas' son-in-law. Engineers quickly determined that the cylindrical cast iron columns of the thirteen longest spans of the bridge (each 245 feet) were of poor quality having, in particular, an eccentric centre. Further no allowance for wind load had been made by Bouch; such calculations were not recognised practice until precipitated by the disaster. After an enquiry, the Board of Trade, concerned about plans for the Forth Rail Bridge on the same railway line, imposed a specification of 56 pounds per square foot. Bouch died within a year of the tragedy.

The Victorian poet William Topaz McGonagall commemorated this event in his poem The Tay Bridge Disaster.

A second rail bridge, designed by William Henry Barlow and built by William Arrol, is sited 60 feet upstream, and parallel to the original bridge of which the stumps of the piers still remain. It opened on 13 July 1887. Nearly two and a quarter miles (3.5 km) long including the brick viaduct, 25,000 tons of iron and steel, 70,000 tons of concrete, ten million bricks weighing 37,500 tons and three million rivets. Fourteen men lost their lives during its construction, mostly due to drowning.

The new bridge remains in use today; and in 2003, a £20.85 million strengthening and refurbishment project on the Bridge won the British Construction Industry Civil Engineering Award, in consideration of the staggering scale and logistics involved. In the refurbishment, more than 1000 tonnes of bird droppings were scraped off the ironwork lattice of the bridge using hand tools, and bagged into 25 kg sacks; hundreds of thousand rivets were removed and replaced, all in very exposed conditions high over an estuary with fast running tides.