Episode 1 of 3
Collapse of the Tay Rail Bridge
- When
- 28 December 1879
- Where
- Tay Rail Bridge
The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge collapsed during a violent storm on 28 December 1879, killing all passengers on a North British Railway train.
A violent storm, rated 10 to 12 on the Beaufort scale, blew at right angles to the bridge. The train failed to appear on the line into Dundee, and communication with the signal cabin was lost. Divers later found the train within the girders, with the engine in the fifth span.
Sources
- Tay Bridge disaster Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-22
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.