What events led up to the disaster?

The morning of Sunday December 28th 1879 was quiet. When Captain Wright took his ferry boat, the ‘Dundee’, across the Tay firth at 1.15 p.m., he noted that the weather was good and the water was calm. The 4.15 p.m. crossing was just as uneventful but the Captain noted that the wind had freshened. By 5.15 p.m. a gale was moving in from the west and the river, in the words of the Captain “was getting up very fast”. The local shuttle train left Newport at 5.50 p.m. and arrived at Dundee station shortly after 6 p.m.. The passengers had had a worrying crossing. Their carriages had been buffeted by the growing force of the storm and lines of sparks had flown from the wheel flanges under the sideways force of the wind.

The mail train from Edinburgh had left Burntisland at 5.20 p.m. and by the time that the local had arrived in Dundee, the mail had reached Thornton Junction, 27 miles south of the bridge. The last station was St Fort, which lay in a small depression south of the bridge. The station staff collected the tickets of the passengers who were going on to Dundee. In addition to three men on the footplate of the locomotive, there were 72 passengers. By 7.13 p.m., the train had reached the signal station at Wormit. The driver slowed the locomotive down to walking pace so as to check with the signalman that the bridge was clear. Then he opened up the regulator, and took the train out onto the bridge and into the teeth of the westerly gale. The signalman returned to the shelter of his cabin, and sent the ‘train entering section’ signal to his opposite number in the signal box at Dundee.

The train receded into the darkness and the light of the three red tail lamps grew dimmer. Sparks flew from the wheels and merged into a continuous sheet that was dragged to the lee of the bridge parapet. Eyewitnesses would later recall at the Board of Trade Inquiry, that they saw a bright glow of light from the direction of the train just after it must have passed into the High Girders section and then all went dark. The train was timed to pass the Dundee signal box at 7.19 p.m. When it failed to arrive, the signalman tried to telegraph the Wormit box but to no avail. The obvious conclusion was that the telegraph lines had been severed where they passed over the bridge. James Roberts, the locomotive foreman at the Dundee engine sheds, walked out over the bridge to investigate. Although at times he was forced to crawl on all fours by the force of the gale, he eventually made his way to the end of the low-level girders. Further progress was impossible: the whole length of the High Girders had disappeared into the river taking the train with it. Although steamers went out later that night, no survivors were found.