On 16/05/15 23:41, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"David Billington" wrote in message
...
One of the issues here in the UK is that the loading gauge is fairly
small in many parts and varies around the country due mainly to the
implementation of the railways being by local companies serving the
locality and joining to other nearby railways forming a network,
also somewhat to the UK having invented the railroad. I live near
the GWR railway and IK Brunel had the foresight to build with a
large loading gauge but others that came later didn't see the need
and built new structures such as bridges with a loading gauge
smaller than used by Brunel. On a recent trip to London you could
see the upshot of this as due to the electrification of the GWR line
many small loading gauge bridges are having to be raised or rebuilt
to make room for the overhead electric cables. My neighbour is
fairly up on railways and has travelled much of the world including
the US and Russia and noted that while the US uses 4' 8.5" spacing
as the UK and has much larger trains, he mentioned Russia as having
IIRC slightly wider rail spacing and trains larger again than those
in the US, all down to what the system was designed for and what the
loading gauge size was set to be.
Have they ever determined why the Tay bridge collapsed?

I can't figure out why the high girder fell so close to the piers if
the weakest points were the lower diagonal braces' cast iron
attachment lugs. Wouldn't the concrete-filled round columns have
tipped over intact?

-jsw


I think it was fairly thoroughly examined at the time see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster