Dee Bridge disaster
This article needs additional citations for verification. (July 2010) |
Dee bridge disaster | |
---|---|
North Wales Coast Line and Shrewsbury–Chester line | |
Cause | Bridge fail |
Statistics | |
Trains | 1 |
Passengers | 22 |
Deaths | 5 |
Injured | 9 |
List of UK rail accidents by year |
The Dee Bridge disaster was a
Background
A new bridge across the
Accident
On 24 May 1847, the carriages of a local passenger train to Ruabon fell through the bridge into the river. The accident resulted in five deaths (three passengers, the train guard and the locomotive fireman) and nine serious injuries.[1]
The bridge had been designed by Robert Stephenson, and a local inquest accused him of negligence. Although strong in compression, cast iron was known to be brittle in tension or bending, yet the bridge deck was covered with track ballast on the day of the accident,[vague] to prevent the oak beams supporting the track from catching fire. Stephenson took that precaution because of a recent fire on the Great Western Railway at Hanwell, in which a bridge designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel had caught fire and collapsed.[2][3][4]
Investigation
The investigation was one of the first major inquiries conducted by the newly formed
Stephenson maintained that the locomotive
Royal Commission
A subsequent
The Norwood accident in 1891 led to a review of all similar structures by
The Dee bridge was later rebuilt using wrought iron, after several more failed attempts to use cast iron by Stephenson.
See also
- List of bridge disasters
- List of structural failures and collapses
- Structural engineering
- Structural failure
References
- ^ Simmons, Capt. J.L.A. (1847), Report to the Commissioners of the Railways, p. 16, retrieved 10 December 2016 – via Railways Archive
- ^ Commissioners of Railways (1848). Report of the Commissioners of Railways. London, England: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. pp. 103–104 – via Google Books.
- ISBN 9781780226484– via Google Books.
- ^ Accident at Hanwell Bridge on 26th May 1847. UK – via Railways Archive.
- Lewis, P.R.; Gagg, C. (2004). Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. 45 (29).
{{cite journal}}
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(help) - Lewis, P.R. (2007). Disaster on the Dee: Robert Stephenson's Nemesis of 1847. Tempus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7524-4266-2.
- Petroski, Henry (1994). Design Paradigms. ISBN 0-521-46108-1.
- Rolt, LTC (1998). Red for Danger. Sutton Publishing.
- Wilding, Roy (2003). Death in Chester. ISBN 1-872265-44-8.