This memorial was unveiled 134 years to the day of the Tay Bridge Disaster, when at 7.15pm on Sunday, December 28th 1879, the train from Edinburgh, bound for Dundee, fell into the River Tay as the central portion of the bridge collapsed in a severe gale, leading to the deaths of 75 people originally, although this number is thought to be 59 officially.
The railway bridge over the Tay south from the city of Dundee, was opened to passengers on 1st June 1878. Thomas Bouch designed the bridge and was also involved with the construction and maintenance, the bridge was built by Hodkin Gilkes & Co. of Middlesbrough. At two miles long it was the longest bridge in the world at the time, carrying a single track on lattice girders, supported on slender cast-iron columns. There were 85 spans with 13 central girders, 27 feet high and 88 feet above the water, known as the high girders. On the night of the collapse, a train with six carriages was crossing the bridge in hurricane like conditions, when the high girders fell.
Bouch, who was knighted by Queen Victoria shortly after the bridge's opening, was found culpable for the bridge's collapse, and was working on the Forth Bridge at the time, work which was then transferred to Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler.
The remaining standing girders of the bridge were transferred to the new bridge which was designed by William Henry Barlow, and built by William Arrol & Co. of Glasgow. The bridge, which now had a double track, was started on July 1883 and completed four years later, it has remained the same ever since, carrying the East Coast Line.
No memorial existed of the disaster until 2013, when two almost identical memorials were unveiled on the anniversary of the disaster on both sides of the river at a cost of £35,000
This particular one can be found on the Fife side of the bridge on the southern shore to west of Wormit. It consists of three giant granite tablets with the names of the deceased on the rear. To the front facing the bridge and the river is the following inscription on the left-most tablet.
'The Tay Rail Bridge Disaster Memorial Trust are grateful to the people of Tayside, Fife, Scotland, and the international community, also to the trusts, local businesses, landowners and authorities, who have contributed in so many ways to this much needed memorial'.
The middle tablet carries a drawing of the rescue effort, and the right-most has the following poem inscribed by Ian Nimmo White.
"Deep Waters could not douse the enduring flame that burned for this blighted. Now let them stand as one, properly remembered and in part righted."
The memorial stands on part of the Fife Coastal Path and can be reached at the end of Bay Road in Wormit, where cars can be parked.