Dee bridge disaster
Overview
Chester
Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...
with five fatalities.
A new bridge across the River Dee
River Dee, Wales
The River Dee is a long river in the United Kingdom. It travels through Wales and England and also forms part of the border between the two countries....
was needed for the Chester and Holyhead Railway
Chester and Holyhead Railway
The Chester and Holyhead Railway was incorporated out of a proposal to link Holyhead, the traditional port for the Irish Mail, with London by way of the existing Chester and Crewe Railway, and what is now the West Coast Main Line...
, a project planned in the 1840s for the expanding British railway system. It was built using cast iron
Cast iron
Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...
girders, each of which was made of three very large castings dovetailed
Dovetail joint
A dovetail joint or simply dovetail is a joint technique most commonly used in woodworking joinery. Noted for its resistance to being pulled apart , the dovetail joint is commonly used to join the sides of a drawer to the front....
together. Each girder was strengthened by wrought iron
Wrought iron
thumb|The [[Eiffel tower]] is constructed from [[puddle iron]], a form of wrought ironWrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon...
bars along the length.
