Tay Bridge disaster Scottish author A. J. Cronin, includes a scene involving the Tay Bridge disaster, and the 1942 filmed version of the book dramatically recreates the bridge's catastrophic collapse. The bridge collapse also figures prominently in Barbara Vine's 2002 novel "The Blood Doctor". Tay Bridge disaster During a violent storm on Sunday 28 December 1879, the first Tay Rail Bridge collapsed as a train from Wormit to Dundee passed over it, killing all aboard. The bridge—designed by Sir Thomas Bouch—used lattice girders supported by iron piers, with cast iron columns and wrought iron cross-bracing. The piers were narrower and their cross-bracing was
Tay Rail Bridge opened nineteen months earlier and having been passed as safe by the Board of Trade, has 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. Within 10 days of the disaster, German poet Theodor Fontane wrote his famous poem . The disaster was commemorated in "The Tay Bridge Disaster", one of the best-known verse efforts of William McGonagall. In the present day, the stumps of the original bridge piers are still visible above the surface of the Tay