3-052-348 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Tay Bridge, scene of the terrible accident on Sunday evening, (1879), 1880. 'A tremendous disaster, the destruction of a grand new work of railway engineering and the sudden death of nearly a hundred persons, took place on Sunday evening at the estuary of the Tay, just below the town of Dundee...The central part of that imposing structure was literally blown away by a gale of wind last Sunday evening; thirteen of the lattice girders crossing the middle spans of the bridge were all at once torn up from the summits of the iron and brick piers that had supported them, as the train, passing over the bridge from the southern to the northern shore, presented its broadside surface to the violent westerly gale. Every carriage, as well as the whole of the upper ironwork in that part, a length of three thousand feet above the deep navigable channel, was hurled into the river, and every person in the train was either drowned or otherwise killed'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.