Thirty Year Rule?

A close reading of the history of major bridge failures is contained in a remarkable piece of scholarship by Paul Sibly and his adviser, then at University College London, Alastair C. Walker. Among the conclusions of their work, published in 1977, was the strong temporal pattern that bridge failure had followed from the middle of the nineteenth century. What Sibly and Walker noted was that the collapse of the Tay, Quebec, and Tacoma Narrows bridges, which occurred in 1879, 1907, and 1940, respectively, were very nearly thirty years apart. A less commonly remembered incident, but one that was equally dramatic and in its own time the subject of investigation by a royal commission, was the collapse of Robert Stephenson’s Dee Bridge in 1847—further reinforcing the observation that a thirty-year cycle was associated with bridge failures. To test their hypothesis, which pointed to a major bridge failure about the year 1970, Sibly and Walker looked at incidents from around that time and found that, indeed, in 1970 there were two significant failures of a new type of steel bridge, known as a box girder, then under construction in Milford Haven, Wales, and in Melbourne, Australia.

Bridge Inspection and Testing
U.S. News & World Report – Aug 6, 2007

The observation I quoted from Henry Petroski’s Engineers of Dreams, that major bridge collapses came about every 30 years–the Tay Bridge in 1879, the Quebec bridge in 1907, the Tacoma Narrows bridge in 1940–may turn out to be right, with this caveat: The I-35W bridge collapse in 2007 may turn out to have been caused by mistakes made in 1967.

Barone Blog: The Bridge Collapse
CBS News – Aug 10, 2007

McGonagall exhibition

A unique exhibition of paintings dedicated to the life and work of Dundee’s famous bad poet, William McGonagall, has been officially opened at Dundee Central Library. The paintings, entitled The Comic Legend of William McGonagall, are on show in the library’s Wighton Heritage Centre and were created by Edinburgh artist and teacher Charles Nasmyth.

Each painting represents one of the many stories about the man who penned The Tay Bridge Disaster and was widely hailed as the writer of the worst poetry in the English language.

The bard immortalised
Evening Telegraph – Apr 5, 2007

New Foot bridge

New bridge planned for River Tay
BBC News – Aug 24, 2007

The collapse of Tay Rail Bridge – The ongoing mystery

The Tay Rail Bridge collapse on December 28th, 1879 is one of the most disasterous accidents in British History has long been seen as a disaster of symbolic significance. It was headline news not only in Britain but across the world and its aftermath was closely watched. The enquiry into the bridge collapse may have provided one answer but for engineers the question of why exactly the bridge broke remains a vexed question. Almost 120 years since the bridge went down new books still come out offering differing solutions.

However besides the musings of railway enthusiasts and experts in metallurgy what interests me is some of the folklore attached to the bridge and its collapse and the river Tay and its bridges. The one example is the concept of the Tay Bridge ghost train. Every year on the anniversary people still gather to watch for the lights of the train which supposedly can be seen only to suddenly disappear half way across the bridge.

But there are many other stories connected to the disaster some well known, some obscure and I mean to collect some of them here as well as keep an ye on the Tay and its various bridges.