Railways are usually considered to be the safest mode of transport. And yet when things go wrong, the devastation can be huge, as the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879 shows.
On the night of Sunday 28 December, a train was passing over the bridge from Wormit, on the southern side of the Firth of Tay, to Dundee. As strong winds blew across its path, the bridge collapsed, killing all the passengers and railway employees on board – an estimated 75 people.
At first, reaction focused on the death toll. It was tempting to blame freak weather, and indeed there had been very heavy gusts.
But soon questions were asked about the bridge’s design. It turned out that cost-cutting measures during the bridge’s construction and its maintenance meant it was a disaster waiting to happen. All it took were high winds – hardly unknown in eastern Scotland in winter.
Ironically the bridge’s designer, Thomas Bouch, had been knighted months before the disaster, after a train carrying Queen Victoria had passed safely across the bridge. To add insult to injury, the disaster was the subject of a commemorative verse by the man widely considered to be the worst poet ever: William McGonagall.
