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 Rail Bridge Bouch had used the technique for viaducts including the Belah Viaduct (1860)) on the South Durham & Lancashire Union Railway line over Stainmore, but for the Tay Bridge, even with the largest practicable caissons the pier dimensions were constrained by their size. Bouch’s pier design set six columns in a hexagon maximising the pier width but not the number of diagonal braces directly resisting sideways forces. The engineering details on the Tay Bridge were considerably simpler, lighter, and cheaper than on the earlier viaducts. On these the machined base of each column section docked securely into a machined enlarged section