Thomas Bouch

It was the longest bridge in the world - a true wonder of the time - but within a year it had collapsed.

The Tay Railway Bridge was to have been the pinnacle of a career spent building railways and bridges in England and Scotland.

When the bridge came crashing down on that fateful night in December 1878 it brought down its designer Thomas Bouch as well.

Bouch had been born in Cumberland in 1822 and, with the death of his father in 1838, he joined a firm of engineers in Manchester.

From there he went to work in railway contracting and the rest is history...Bouch became famous when he developed the idea of roll-on/roll-off ferries for the Edinburgh and Northern Railway on the river Forth but it was his Tay bridge and the proposed Forth Railway Bridge that brought him the fame he craved.

With the loss of the Tay Bridge, he became a recluse and died in October 1880.