Wormit - Izeria

Wormit is a village on the south shore of the Firth of Tay in north-east Fife, Scotland. It is located at the southern end of the Tay Rail Bridge and together with Woodhaven and Newport-on-Tay, Wormit is a part of The Burgh of Newport-on-Tay. The name of the village is thought to be derived from the plant wormwood.

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Wormit railway station

Wormit railway station served the town of Wormit, Fife, Scotland from 1889 to 1969 on the Newport Railway.

Tay Bridge

The Tay Bridge carries rail traffic across the Firth of Tay in Scotland between Dundee and the suburb of Wormit in Fife. Its span is 3,286 metres (2.042 miles). It is the second bridge to occupy the site. Plans for a bridge over the Tay to replace the train ferry service emerged in 1854, but the first Tay Bridge did not open until 1878. It was a lightweight lattice design of relatively low cost with a single track. On 28 December 1879, the bridge suddenly collapsed in high winds while a train was crossing, killing everybody on board. The incident is one of the worst bridge-related engineering disasters in history. An enquiry determined that the bridge was insufficiently engineered to cope with high winds. It was replaced by a second bridge constructed of iron and steel, with a double track, parallel to the remains of the first bridge. Work commenced on 6 July 1883 and the bridge opened in 1887. The new bridge was subject to extensive testing by the Board of Trade, which resulted in a favourable report. In 2003, the bridge was strengthened and refurbished, winning a British Construction Industry Engineering Award to mark the scale and difficulty of the project.

Tay Bridge disaster

The Tay Bridge disaster occurred during a violent European windstorm on Sunday 28 December 1879, when the first Tay Rail Bridge collapsed as a North British Railway (NBR) passenger train on the Edinburgh to Aberdeen Line travelling from Burntisland to Dundee passed over it, killing all aboard. The bridge, designed by Sir Thomas Bouch, used lattice girders supported by iron piers, with cast iron columns and wrought iron cross-bracing. The piers were narrower and their cross-bracing was less extensive and robust than on previous similar designs by Bouch. Bouch had sought expert advice on wind loading when designing a proposed rail bridge over the Firth of Forth; as a result of that advice he had made no explicit allowance for wind loading in the design of the Tay Bridge. There were other flaws in detailed design, in maintenance, and in quality control of castings, all of which were, at least in part, Bouch's responsibility. Bouch died less than a year after the disaster, his reputation ruined. Future British bridge designs had to allow for wind loadings of up to 56 pounds per square foot (2.7 kilopascals). Bouch's design for the Forth Bridge was not used. As of 2024, it remains the fifth-deadliest railway accident in the history of the United Kingdom, as well as the second deadliest rail accident in Scottish history, being surpassed by the UK's deadliest: the Quintinshill rail disaster.

St Fort

St Fort (, , or ) is a rural area, largely in Forgan parish, Fife. The current form of the name is late eighteenth century, the origin being a sandy ford on the Motray Water, in all likelihood the ford earlier known as Adnectan or Nechtan's ford. St Fort Hill lies immediately to the south of Newport-on-Tay and William Burn’s St Fort House, a large baronial mansion, demolished in 1953, lay on its southern slopes. The Home Farm, to its west, survives. Further south, the area was formerly served by St Fort railway station, on the Edinburgh–Aberdeen line. The triangular adjunct of the St Fort junctions, connecting the now-defunct Newburgh and North Fife Railway, lay to the station's south-east. Baillie Scott’s Arts and Crafts style Sandford House Hotel, taking the earlier form of the area's name, lies immediately to the station's west, just into Kilmany parish. Its restoration as a residence and holiday cottages was documented in the BBC television series Restoration Home. The area is one of the origins of the surname Sandford. It is not to be confused with St Ford, 15 miles to the southeast in the parish of Kilconquhar, similarly sharing its origin as Sandford.