Customer Reviews

Thomas Bouch: The Builder of the Tay Bridge

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This is the first serious biography of Thomas Bouch, the builder of the first Tay bridge, which collapsed when an express train was crossing during a storm. The author is an engineer, and provides an excellent account of Bouch's career up to the Tay bridge disaster of December 28th, 1879. It was (and still is) the worst structural disaster in British history, and has been analysed in great detail by several authors, most recently by Lewis in his book Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay (2004). Bouch started his career in the railway industry in the north of England, contributing some fine viaducts (such as that at Belah, but now sadly demolished). He also developed the first "roll-on, roll-off" ferry to cross the Firth of Forth. Elsewhere, however, his railway to St Andrews was built on the cheap from old rail lines, and suffered substantial damage from passing traffic. When it came to building the Tay bridge, he neglected basic design rules, and adopted cast iron columns to supported the very heavy girders needed to cross the Tay estuary. They were made at a local foundry constructed for the bridge at Wormit, but standards were very low, and many faulty columns built into the bridge. Examination of the evidence shows that the high girder section fell because of failure of the supporting towers, probably by a combination of fatigue and loosening of the critical bracing elements. However, John Rapley mis-states the evidence, and attempts to explain the disaster by saying that the train derailed, and so brought the section down. There is very little corroboration for this theory, and it mars what would otherwise be a good account of the accident.