Tay Bridge disaster 1896, the structural engineer doing so saying later that the bridge would have blown over if it had ever seen windloadings of . The locomotive, NBR no. 224, a 4-4-0 designed by Thomas Wheatley and built at Cowlairs Works in 1871, was salvaged and repaired, remaining in service until 1919, nicknamed "The Diver"; many superstitious drivers were reluctant to take it over the new bridge. The stumps of the original bridge piers are still visible above the surface of the Tay. Memorials have been placed at either end of the bridge in Dundee and Wormit. Various additional pieces of evidence
Tay Bridge disaster have been advanced in the last 40 years, leading to 'forensic engineering' reinterpretations of what actually happened. The disaster inspired several songs and poems, most famously William McGonagall's "The Tay Bridge Disaster", widely considered to be of such a low quality as to be comical. The German poet Theodor Fontane, shocked by the news, wrote his poem "". It was published only ten days after the tragedy happened. C. Horne's ballad "In Memory of the Tay Bridge Disaster" was published as a broadside in May 1880. It describes the moment of the disaster as: "Hatter's Castle", the 1931 novel of