Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay: Reinvestigating the Tay Bridge Disaster of 1879

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Summary: truth at last!
Review: The rail disaster at the Tay bridge shocked the whole world in 1879: it was the longest bridge in the world, and collapsed during a storm, taking a passenger train to its doom. There were no survivors. This new evaluation of the tragedy shows why it occurred, and counters all previous speculation that it was the storm which caused the accident. In fact, the bridge was badly designed, and built on the cheap. Perfectly good bridges had been built of cast iron columns braced with wrought iron by Eiffel in France, and still carry trains to this day. The Tay bridge started to suffer irreparable damage of its joints from the day that it carried trains, and the author shows that metal fatigue played a key role in its deterioration. The final catastrophe occurred when the damaged joints reached criticality, and over half a mile of the bridge fell with the train. The lessons learnt gave birth to the magnificent Forth Bridge, which like the Booklyn bridge, remain ikons of engineering skill to this day.