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 anomalously high because of peculiarities of the site (one of the highest points on the Wirral.<ref name="The Wirral Hundred/The Wirral Peninsula"></ref>): a wind pressure of would overturn railway carriages and such events were a rarity. (To give a subsequent, well documented example, in 1903 a stationary train "was" overturned on the Levens viaduct but this was by a 'terrific gale' measured at Barrow in Furness to have an average velocity of , estimated to be gusting up to .) A new double-track Tay Bridge was built by the NBR, designed by Barlow and built by William Arrol & Co. of