The Tay Bridge in Scotland, was designed by Thomas Bouch, a civil engineer. The first Tay Bridge took a total of six years to build, materials used included;

• Ten million bricks,
• Two million rivets,
• Eighty-seven thousand cubic feet of timber,
• Fifteen thousand casks of cement.

Six hundred men were employed throughout the construction of the bridge, twenty of whom lost their lives.

It officially opened on 26th September 1877, and cost over £300,000 to build.

During the night of 28th December 1879, during a vicious storm, the bridge collapsed taking a train carrying over seventy passengers with it. The train fell into the River Tay leaving no survivors.

The Tay Bridge disaster is thought to have been caused by mechanical failure, however catastrophic events like this have happened, and are still happening either by human origin or by natural origin.

This disaster made the scientific world sit up and take an interest in material science and tensile testing.

The Open University currently has a unit investigating the Tay Bridge Disaster. More information can be found on the following link;

Open University - Tay Bridge Disaster