The High Girders.

By John Prebble

Printed: 1966

Publisher: Secker & Warburg. London

Dimensions 15 × 22 × 2.5 cm
Language

Language: English

Size (cminches): 15 x 22 x 2.5

£26.00
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Item information

Description

In the original dustsheet. Maroon cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

This book needs to be put in the Transport, and History categories.

On 28th December, 1879, the 13 raised spans at the centre of the Tay Bridge, the “high girders”, fell, taking with them 160 yards of the bridge, and a railway train with 75 men, women and children on board. This tragically ended the dream of Thomas Bouch, recently knighted for his work on the bridge, and to some extent the unparalleled reputation of British engineering in works of this kind. This book tells the story of the construction of the Tay Bridge from its planning, through its brief moment of triumph followed by disaster and the grim aftermath. It recreates every character and ingredient of this man-made catastrophe and evokes the drama of the fatal night.

The Tay Bridge disaster occurred during a violent storm on Sunday 28 December 1879, when the first Tay Rail Bridge collapsed as a North British Railway (NBR) passenger train on the Edinburgh to Aberdeen Line from Burntisland bound for its final destination of Dundee passed over it, killing all aboard. The bridge—designed by Sir Thomas Bouch—used lattice girders supported by iron piers, with cast iron columns and wrought iron cross-bracing. The piers were narrower, and their cross-bracing was less extensive and robust than on previous similar designs by Bouch.

Bouch had sought expert advice on wind loading when designing a proposed rail bridge over the Firth of Forth; as a result of that advice he had made no explicit allowance for wind loading in the design of the Tay Bridge. There were other flaws in detailed design, in maintenance, and in quality control of castings, all of which were, at least in part, Bouch’s responsibility.

Bouch died less than a year after the disaster, his reputation ruined. Future British bridge designs had to allow for wind loadings of up to 56 pounds per square foot (2.7 kilopascals). Bouch’s design for the Forth Bridge was not used.

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