Tay Bridge disaster that the wind pressure on the high girders had been no more than , from the absence of damage to vulnerable features on buildings in Dundee and the signal cabins at the south end of the bridge. The Inquiry felt that these locations were significantly more sheltered, and therefore rejected this argument. Baker's subsequent work on wind pressures at the Forth Rail Bridge site showed meteorologists "were" overestimating, but his might have over-interpreted the data. Law had numerous criticisms of the bridge design, some echoed by other engineers: Both Pole and Law had calculated the wind loading needed to overturn
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