Did the Tay bridge fall down?

An inquiry into the collapse of the Tay bridge found several reasons for the collapse of what was then the longest rail bridge in the world:

• The piers and wind bracing had not been properly constructed.
• Engineer Sir Thomas Bouch was largely held responsible for not making sufficient allowance for wind loading.
• The cylindrical cast iron columns which supported the longest spans of the bridge, each of which was 75m in height, were found to be of insufficient quality for their purpose.
• The final straw leading to the collapse was a violent storm on the evening of 28 December 1879, which caused the central navigation spans of the bridge to collapse into the Firth of Tay at Dundee.