THE TAY IS BRIDGED
FINISHED AT LAST
And so at long last the bridge was finished. It had taken six hundred men six years to build, using 10,000,000 bricks and 2,000,000 rivets, 87,000 cubic feet of timber, 15,000 casks of cement, 3,700 tons of cast iron and 3,500 tons of malleable iron. It had cost the lives of twenty workmen, and over £300,000. Let William McGonagall mark the occasion in his inimitable fashion:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!
I hope that God will protect all passengers
By night and by day,
And that no accident will befall them while crossing
The Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
For that would be most awful to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green83
The correspondent of The Times was less lyrical, but he also sought to reassure himself that the structure was stronger and safer than it looked:
It was so long and so loft, and yet so narrow that when seen from the heights above Newport it looks like a mere cable slung from shore to shore; and seeing a train puffing along it for the first time excited the same kind of nervousness as must have been felt by those who watched Blondin crossing Niagara. Fragile as its appearance is, however, there is no doubt about its thorough stability.84
THE FIRST TRAIN
The first train to cross, if one discounts the work engines trundling along the rails with materials for the bridge builders, was the Lochee, which on 26 September 1877 carried a full complement of the directors of the North British Railway Company and their guests.
Prior to that, Bouch had taken care that the ironwork of the bridge should be thoroughly prepared, a process which included the tightening of the gib and cotter tensioning device in each bracing bar before any trains went over the bridge. At one point Albert Grothe was approached by the contractor who was engaged in excavating the tunnel beside the harbour wall for permission to run trains over the bridge carrying excavated material to the south side of the river. When consulted by Grothe, Bouch made the position abundantly clear:
I dare not risk any engine on the bridge until the ties are properly tightened and bear their share of the strain. If any idea were entertained of running an engine on the bridge before this is done, I would immediately resign the engineership to escape responsibility and, moreover, I would consider it my duty to report the matter to the Procurator Fiscal.85
By 26 September, this work had been duly carried out. It was a fine day, and the engine shone in its green livery and gleaming brass, pulling behind it a saloon, a first-class coach, and two brake vans. John Stirling was there, and John Beaumont, the deputy chairman, Sir James Falshaw and a number of Scottish MPs. Starting from Burntisland, the train stopped at Leuchars to pick up the local dignitaries from Dundee, including the chairman of the Tay Bridge Undertaking, James Cox, and the MP for Dundee, James Yeaman. The engine itself was driven not by a regular engine driver, but by Dugald Drummond, the legendary locomotive superintendent for the Company. Setting off again from Leuchars, Drummond brought the train to a halt at the southern end of the bridge to pick up some more important passengers, including Mrs Bouch, while her husband had the fun of riding on the footplate of the pilot engine which ran before them across the bridge.
‘The scene presented,’ enthused the Advertiser, which had forgotten its earlier opposition to a single line bridge,
was one not likely to be speedily effaced from the recollection of those by whom it was witnessed. High up in the air was the train moving majestically along what, viewed from distant shores, seems a thread-like support. Below were the steamers dancing about on the silver waters, their occupants jubilant with delight that they had been privileged to witness the consummation of one of the most remarkable triumphs of engineering skill; and the crowds on the Dundee side lining the Esplanade and covering Magdalen Green cheering and waving their hats and handkerchiefs enthusiastically.
The journey across the bridge took exactly fifteen minutes, or about three times as long as it would take the regular passenger service once the bridge came into full operation. As the train crossed the high girders, the roof-lights on one of the carriages collided with some wooden scaffolding, and were carried away into the swirling waters below. ‘Some of the more timorous passengers were thrown into a slight momentary alarm’, but they were quickly reassured, and the cavalcade soon arrived safely in the marshalling yards (Taybridge Station itself was yet to be completed) and the dignitaries alighted for the ceremonial lunch. Once that was over they re-entered the train and disappeared back again over the bridge in the direction of Edinburgh.86
It would be another eight months before the general public would be able to share the experience of crossing the bridge by train, but there was no doubt in the minds of Bouch’s fellow engineers, or some of them at any rate, that he had achieved a notable success. And if the Tay Bridge were a success, then it could be only a matter of time before Bouch’s grand design of carrying the line over both Forth and Tay was accomplished. W.H. Barlow, who was in due course to figure as a member of the three-man inquiry into the collapse, and to be the architect of the new replacement Tay Bridge, was, in October 1877, unstinting in his praise for his fellow engineer. In a letter to a colleague, he wrote of Bouch’s plan:
I am not at all without hope that this great work will yet be carried into effect. Mr Bouch’s great Tay Bridge is a success which familiarises the minds of capitalists with large engineering works capable of earning their money’s worth, and as to the span of the structure, I saw a bridge of like span last year in the course of construction between New York and Brooklyn. With such examples I shall not give up hope that the crowning work of Mr Bouch will yet be accomplished.87
BOARD OF TRADE INSPECTION
Although the directors had had their first run over the bridge, the crossing could not be opened to the public without inspection and certification by the Board of Trade. The inspector despatched for the purpose was a former military engineer, Major General Charles Hutchinson, R.E. Hutchinson spent three days from 25 to 27 February 1878, examining and testing every, or almost every, aspect of the bridge. He ran ballast engines across it, starting with a single engine and working up to six. He ran them across the high girders, and used a theodolite to measure the amount of lateral oscillation, which he found to be ‘nothing at all excessive, as far as my judgment went’. He examined the ironwork, and reported that it ‘has been well put together both in the columns and the girders.’ The one test he did not make – indeed could not make without a convenient storm – was to observe the bridge in a gale. He was not unaware of this omission, and at the end of his report he noted that ‘When again visiting this spot, I should wish if possible to have an opportunity to observe the effects of a high wind when a train of carriages is running over the bridge.’88 Apart from this observation he made no mention of the effect of wind pressure on the bridge, and given the prominence of this issue as a factor in the collapse of the bridge, his attitude may be significant. At the Court of Inquiry he was quite explicit: ‘The subject of wind pressure never entered into the calculations that I made, and never has done . . . We have no data whatever to go upon with regard to wind pressure. It has never been, to my knowledge, customary to take wind pressure into account in calculating the parts of bridges of this description.’89
He had only a few suggestions for improvements – mostly trivial. There ought, he advised, to be supports across the rails at right angles to keep them the correct distance apart. At one or two places there was some slackness in the rails, and this should be seen to. In order to reduce expansion of the girders in the summer heat, he proposed they should be painted white. He also cautioned against allowing trains to pass over the bridge at excessive speeds, and suggested a speed limit of 25 miles per hour.
And so the bridge was finished, and if it differed in some respects from the original design, what did that matter now? Not only was the bridge finished, but so also were the approach rails joining the bridge to the existing rail system, north and south. So too were the new stations along the route, of which by far the grandest was Dundee’s Taybridge Station, built of Bannockburn stone, and filled with all kinds of modern amenities. Its long central platform was covered from end to end by a huge glass-paned roof, beneath which might be found no fewer than three refreshment rooms and three classes of ladies waiting rooms, as well as lavatories and offices. At its eastern end lay the great tunnel leading upwards to the docks, and beyond them along the coast to Arbroath and Aberdeen.
THE OFFICIAL OPENING
But before the public could enjoy full access to these facilities, there had to be one more ceremony – the official opening of the bridge, planned for 31 May, 1878. There had been hopes that for this occasion Queen Victoria herself could be persuaded to come out of her long seclusion and perform the ceremony, but these hopes were not realised. In the event the honour fell upon James Cox, an honour to which, as chairman of the Undertaking, he had a rightful claim.
For once the weather was fine and the water calm, which was just as well as the arrangements required that the dignitaries from Dundee should first travel across the river in the ferry, Auld Reekie, before making their way to Leuchars station to join up with the party from Edinburgh. These gentlemen with their ladies had taken the familiar route from Waverley station to Granton, crossing the Forth on the steamer John Stirling to Burntisland, where the special train was waiting to take them across Fife to Leuchars. At Leuchars they were joined by the Dundee party, and soon the train, consisting of a number of first-class carriages, carrying some fifteen hundred people and drawn by the gallant Lochee, pulled out of the station. A few minutes later they passed through St Fort, the last station on the line before the bridge, past Thomas Barclay’s signal box, and then on to the bridge itself. At a steady pace, never exceeding the stipulated 25 mph, the train moved along the bridge, through the high girders, down the sloping section on the north side, round the curve on the shore line, where thousands of spectators standing on Magdalen Green waved and cheered, and into Taybridge Station. Here they were greeted by Provost Robertson, who shook John Stirling warmly by the hand and bid him welcome. Amid the cheers of the bystanders, James Cox spoke of the bridge over the Tay as ‘a structure worthy of this enlightened age’, which he now declared to be officially open, and the party moved off in a procession behind the band of the Forfarshire Volunteers in the direction of the Albert Institute and the banquet which awaited those fortunate enough to have received an invitation. But before the gathering could sit down for lunch, one more ceremony had to take place – the granting of the freedom of the city to both Stirling and Bouch, agreed at a meeting of the Town Council only that morning. Stirling was there to receive it, of course, but Bouch was not. Never keen on public display, he had not come to the celebrations at all, preferring to send his apologies and mention disarmingly that he was fully engaged in designing the successor to the Tay Bridge – the bridge that would span the Forth. Later that year, however, on 9 August, at a separate ceremony, Bouch was presented with the freedom of the city by Provost Robertson. His thoughts were evidently very much on the new venture. In accepting the honour, he said that ‘it was a matter of regret . . . that the Tay Bridge was built for a single line, but guided by the experience gained, the bridge across the Forth was to be made for a double line’.90 And so it was, of course, but not by Bouch.
The passenger rail service using the new bridge began on Saturday, 1 June, 1878. The Company had already announced the new timetable – they would run seven trains a day each way between Edinburgh and Dundee, the first train from Dundee leaving at 6.25 a.m. For those travelling all the way to Edinburgh, and therefore having to catch the first ferry crossing the Forth, the best plan would be to wait for the 7.15, which connected with the ferry at Burntisland at half past eight. The combined ferry crossing and train journey into Edinburgh accounted for a further hour and five minutes, making a total travelling time of two hours and twenty minutes, or about one hour less than the old pre-bridge journey.
In the early days the journey across the bridge became a popular outing, with passengers from Dundee buying tickets for the short trip to St Fort or Leuchars (ninepence for a ticket to St Fort) and making a picnic of it, but the long-term value of the bridge to the company lay in its ability to attract passenger and goods traffic away from the Caledonian. The early morning passenger from Waverley to Dundee now had a choice between leaving at 6.15 a.m. on the Caledonian train which arrived in Dundee at 9.45, or of taking the North British train leaving at 6.40, but still getting to Dundee at two minutes past nine, almost three-quarters of an hour before its rival. Moreover, with the opening of the bridge, under previous agreements, the North British was entitled to run its trains over the Caledonian line to Aberdeen via Arbroath.
The outcome was hardly surprising. By the end of the first year of operation, it was estimated, the North British was carrying 84% of the Edinburgh-Dundee traffic, and 59% of the traffic between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The volume of traffic between Dundee and the towns and villages of Fife had doubled. Perhaps more important than the increase in passenger business was the increase in the carriage of freight, especially coal from the Fife coal mines. In only six months, goods traffic to Dundee had risen by 40 per cent.
In terms of the railway business in Scotland, the bridge had led directly to the supremacy of the North British over its powerful rivals. It now commanded the largest rail operation in the country, carrying over 15 million passengers a year, and with a gross annual revenue of more than £2 million. The bridge had done everything John Stirling and the promoters of the Undertaking had hoped for. The value of shares in the company rose by 30 percent.91
THE QUEEN CROSSES THE BRIDGE
Only one final accolade was missing – the actual presence of the Queen. If the directors had not been too surprised at her refusal to attend the opening ceremony, there was no good reason in their opinion why she should not at least travel over the bridge on her way south from Balmoral, rather than take the overland route via Perth. And indeed that was already the royal intention, signalled by a test run of the royal train, empty of passengers, across the bridge and back again towards the end of June, 1879. Moreover, with a little subtle persuasion by representatives of Dundee’s Town Council, Her Majesty also agreed to have her train pause briefly at Taybridge Station, for her to receive a civic address through the window of her carriage.
What an occasion! It made the previous ceremonies to honour the bridge seem quiet affairs by comparison. All along the route of the train crowds gathered to wave and cheer. In Dundee the flags were out in the streets, ships in the harbour were covered in bunting, and the boys on the Mars were drawn up on deck in their smartest uniforms. At the station a huge collection of important people stood waiting for the train to arrive – headed by Provost Brownlie, clutching the address of welcome which he would shortly read to the royal visitor. Sure enough, at 5.57 p.m. the train emerged from the Dock Street tunnel in a cloud of steam, and came to rest in front of the delegation to the strains of the National Anthem. The address was read, Bouch, Stirling and Cox were presented, and the brief visit was over. The train pulled away towards the bridge which it took at half the normal speed, while the boys on the Mars stood rigidly to attention and the ship’s guns fired the salute. There was an epilogue. On 27 June 1879, Thomas Bouch was knighted at Windsor Castle, along with, amongst others, Henry Bessemer, inventor of the Bessemer iron-smelting process.92
DOUBTS SET IN
And yet not everyone was happy with the bridge. A number of regular passengers on the line began to be concerned at the speed of the train as it made the crossing, which they calculated was much faster than the 25 mph stipulated by the Board of Trade. One, former Dundee Provost William Robertson, went so far as to abandon his season ticket on the railway and revert to using the ferry. Robertson also complained to the stationmaster at Taybridge, James Smith, who spoke to at least one of the drivers. John Leng, editor and owner of the Dundee Advertiser, was also convinced that the trains were going too fast, and he complained of a ‘curious prancing motion, as the carriages passed over the bridge, quite unlike the normal behaviour of a train on solid ground’. He mentioned all this to Smith and to Henry Noble, who had been in charge of brickwork construction on the bridge, and was now the Company’s Inspector for the whole structure. After the bridge came into service, the Dundee Water Commissioners laid a six-inch water pipe across it, to provide Newport with a water supply. It was noted during the laying of the pipe that whenever a train passed over the bridge, the resulting oscillation ‘had a range of several inches’. Charles Lindsay, an engineer who crossed the bridge by train a few days before the accident, commented on the ‘bad treatment the bridge received from passing trains’.
Painters working on the bridge noticed a number of unusual things, not all of which they thought to mention at the time. Amongst these were a large number of iron bolts lying about, which for all they knew might have been left there by the builders. James Edward, questioned by the North British solicitors before the Inquiry, but not called to give evidence to the Court, spoke of having ‘seen bolt heads falling about us when it was a frosty morning’, he himself having been struck by one on the shoulder. ‘One morning in particular while a train was going over three or four bolt heads came down altogether just beside me.’ John Evans, similarly questioned, had ‘found occasionally slack rivits [sic] or nuts awanting . . . Saw rivit holes without anything in them . . . Some of the diagonal bars were slack, one in particular was scarcely fastened at all. Several of them were worried by the motion of the bridge in high winds, or when a train passed over it. According to Evans, ‘When trains came on the bridge it vibrated from side to side until the train was three to four girders from you, when she began to lift up and down as the motions became amalgamated like, and after she passed the same side to side motion was felt again.’ Evans had experimented by tying a stone to the handrail so that it hung down, and ‘watched its motion as a train came on and passed.’93
MAINTAINING THE BRIDGE
Responsibility for maintaining the bridge once it had been handed over to the North British was to be shared. Bouch himself was engaged to look after the bridge at an annual fee of 100 guineas, and he in turn appointed Henry Noble as his inspector. Maintenance of the permanent way was the responsibility of James Bell, the North British engineer. Between them they had five staff. Noble had a boatman, whose job it was to examine the bridge from the water for three shillings and sixpence an hour; a lamplighter at one guinea a week; and a foreman. Bell had two men on the bridge to tighten the bolts on the fishplates and ensure that the rails were secure. All commentators testify to Noble’s dedication to his job, but also to his lack of expertise when it came to ironwork. He was determined to keep the cost of maintenance to an absolute minimum. He instructed the lamplighter, McKinney, to go round turning off the twenty-eight gas lamps at 3.00 a.m. on summer mornings. He sometimes paid for materials to repair the bridge out of his own pocket. When it was discovered that by some oversight the contract to paint the bridge had not included the woodwork, some 87,000 cubic feet of it, he blandly suggested that if supplied with the paint, his men could do the work in and amongst their regular inspection duties. He became almost obsessively concerned with the effects of the scouring action of the water on the bridge supports, and arranged for thousands of tons of rubble to be laid around them. As a result, he was able to report, ‘the heaviest train makes no perceptible motion below, and if it were not for the noise you would not believe a train had passed over’.
In March of 1879, Noble sent a diver down to examine the remains of the girder which had remained there ever since being blown off the piers in February of 1877. This inspection showed that the scour had dredged a great trough underneath the girder, and Noble decided to have the tieplates blown apart with dynamite, so that the remaining ironwork would collapse into the hole to be covered with rubble. There then followed an almost farcical episode, as he tried to secure the necessary explosive. ‘In consequence of the dynamite agent at Dundee having no dynamite in his store,’ he reported,
I had to go personally with my man to the various quarries and beg it, and as there is a heavy penalty if it’s known you are carrying it through a town, great secrecy had to be adopted. In fact very few persons know what we have been about, and I paid for everything in connection with the job in ready cash. It was the best and only method I could adopt to get over the affair quietly and economically.94
Conscientious he may have been, but this was no substitute for expert knowledge, and while Noble was certainly experienced in brickwork and masonry, he knew little about ironwork. This did not stop him from carrying out minor repairs himself. In October 1879, only weeks before the disaster, Noble heard a chattering noise in some of the tie bars as a train passed overhead. On investigation, he discovered that some of the bars had come loose, due to the slackening of the gib and cotter tensioning device. He then proceeded to purchase a quantity of iron from a local ironmonger, and from it cut 150 wedges to fill the gap. This dealt with the slackness, but he failed to realise that the loss of tension was due to the bending of the tie bolts within the lugs. According to Rapley, ‘with the best of intentions Noble had unwittingly contributed to the fate of the bridge.’95 Some defects he did report to Bouch, and when he found some deep vertical cracks in the cast-iron columns Bouch was told about it. Bouch’s response was to comment that Brunel had had similar problems with his bridge at Chepstow, and gave orders for the defective parts to be braced with hoops of iron.96