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Last modified: April 21, 2004

DUNDEE RAIL DISASTER

December 28th 1879

The loss of a seven-car train operated by the North British Railway that crashed through a wide gap of the famous Tay Bridge at Dundee, Scotland, on December 28, 1879, was a calamity of epic dimensions.

The disaster was trumpeted worldwide, for the Tay was the longest bridge on earth. No survivors  were ever recovered from the swollen, gale-swept waters of the Tay River.

Up to this time train wrecks evoked much interest, particularly in the lurid tales told by survivors and reprinted with all their gory details in the otherwise dull columns of the yellow sheets."

But other train wrecks had survivors. The Dundee catastrophe offered only sullen mystery and the mute wreckage of torn clothing, traveling valises and the tops of coaches floating to shore.

The train left Edinburgh at 4:15 p.m. Two hours later, with near hurricane winds blowing along the Tay, the train rolled onto the long trestle. Whether or not the bridge was damaged before the train approached was never discovered.

Most think the weight of the train was the final strain that caused already weakened spans to collapse and send the train hurtling downward 88 feet to disappear in the boiling waters of the Tay, flooded at that moment to 45 feet in depth.

Thirteen girders along the central span, each 245 feet in length, caved in, and the two-year-old bridge, considered to be an engineering marvel, was gone.

During their plunge the seventy-five passengers no doubt struggled to open their compartment doors and take their chances in the river. This was futile, as the New York Times pointed out, because of an absurd rule of that time on railroads of Great Britain.

That the doors of every car were locked when the train left its last station; so that the passengers were drowned without even having the chance to make a struggle for life."

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