Tay Rail Bridge with fast-running tides. Tay Rail Bridge The Tay Bridge carries the railway across the Firth of Tay in Scotland between Dundee and the suburb of Wormit in Fife. Its span is . It is the second bridge to occupy the site. Plans for a bridge over the Tay to replace the train ferry service emerged in 1854 but the first Tay Bridge did not open until 1878. It was a lightweight lattice design of relatively low cost with a single track. On 28 December 1879, the bridge suddenly collapsed in high winds. The incident is one of the greatest bridge-related
Tay Bridge disaster the support of circumstantial evidence – that the bridge might well have failed at the north end first; he explicitly dismissed the claim that the train had hit the girders before the bridge fell. Yolland and Barlow concluded that the bridge had failed at the south end first; and made no explicit finding as to whether the train had hit the girders. They noted instead that apart from Bouch himself, Bouch's witnesses claimed/conceded that the bridge failure was due to a shock loading on lugs heavily stressed by windloading. Their report is therefore consistent with either a view that the