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Thomas Bouch

Sir Thomas Bouch (/ˈb/; 25 February 1822 – 30 October 1880) was a British railway engineer. He was born in Thursby, near Carlisle, Cumberland,[1] and lived in Edinburgh. As manager of the Edinburgh and Northern Railway he introduced the first roll-on/roll-off train ferry service in the world. Subsequently as a consulting engineer, he helped develop the caisson and popularised the use of lattice girders in railway bridges. He was knighted after the successful completion of the first Tay Railway Bridge, but his reputation was destroyed by the subsequent Tay Bridge disaster, in which 75 people are believed to have died as a result of defects in design, construction and maintenance, for all of which Bouch was held responsible. He died within 18 months of being knighted.

Sir Thomas Bouch
Born(1822-02-25)25 February 1822
Thursby, Cumberland, England
Died30 October 1880(1880-10-30) (aged 58)
Moffat, Scotland
OccupationEngineer
Engineering career
DisciplineCivil engineer
Structural engineer
InstitutionsInstitution of Civil Engineers (Associate 1850, Member 1858)
ProjectsWaverley Station, Tay Rail Bridge

Early career Edit

 
Bouch's pioneering ferry ramp

Bouch's father (a retired sea-captain) kept the Ship Inn at Thursby and Thomas was educated locally (Thursby and then Carlisle) before at the age of 17 beginning his civil engineering career as assistant to one of the engineers constructing the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway. After a short spell working in Leeds (1844–45) he was for four years one of the Resident Engineers on the Stockton and Darlington Railway, leaving in 1849 to become manager and engineer of the Edinburgh and Northern Railway, one of the precursors of the North British Railway.[1] He introduced the first roll-on roll-off train ferries in the world, across the Firth of Forth from Granton to Burntisland in Fife (3 February 1850.)[2][page needed] Others had had similar ideas, but Bouch put them into effect, and did so with an attention to detail (such as design of the ferry slip) which led a subsequent President of the Institution of Civil Engineers[3] to settle any dispute over priority of invention with the observation that "there was little merit in a simple conception of this kind, compared with a work practically carried out in all its details, and brought to perfection."[1]

Railway and bridge designer Edit

Bouch then set up on his own as a railway engineer, working chiefly in Scotland and Northern England. Lines he designed include four connecting lines all built by separate companies, which together allowed a direct connection between the West Cumbrian haematite mines and the area served by the Stockton and Darlington (which was behind them):

His response to a toast at a dinner after the cutting of the first sod on the Eden Railway gave his philosophy on the engineering of those lines:

The works were all of a light and inexpensive character, and if he gave them a first-class railway, - one upon which any speed attainable by a locomotive engine could be run with perfect safety and ease - if he gave it without any extravagance, then he should only have done his duty, but if he failed then he should deserve all the obloquy and discredit attaching to the failure of light works. … Mr Whitwell had spoken of his character as a maker of cheap railways, but in giving a cheap Eden Valley railway he had relied entirely upon the easy district, and not on inferiority of the works. The line would be carried out in the most permanent and substantial manner possible.[6]

He made considerable use of lattice girder bridges, both with conventional masonry piers and with iron lattice piers; the most notable examples of the latter being on the Stainmore line: the Deepdale[7] and Belah Viaducts.[1] A contemporary treatise on iron bridges[8] praised the detailed engineering of the Belah viaduct piers (and described the viaduct as one of the lightest and cheapest of the kind that had ever been erected.)

Elsewhere, Bouch's forte was cheapness, and an ability to construct branch lines at a capital cost that might allow them to pay their way, especially if operated frugally (In 1854 Bouch advised the directors of the Peebles Railway that the company should work the line themselves, as they could do so much more economically than a large undertaking.)[5] Examples included branches to St Andrews, to Leven, and to Peebles, the Peebles line being described in his obituary as "long the pattern for cheap construction".[1] This could leave over-optimistic clients with a railway designed and built to a price and not making enough money to support proper maintenance (and hence laying up problems for itself as an accident on the St Andrews Railway[9] showed).

Bouch did the initial survey for the Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway, laid out tramway systems in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and London, and designed the Redheugh viaduct a road bridge across the Tyne at the same height as and not far upstream of Stephenson's High Level Bridge. He also designed Hownes Gill Viaduct in Consett, County Durham, which at 700 feet (210 m) long and using a 12-arch design constructed in brick, carried the Stanhope and Tyne Railway 175 feet (53 m) above Hownsgill. Today it forms part of the Sea to Sea Cycle Route.

Bouch returned repeatedly to the problem of bridging the two great East Coast firths. Eventually authorisation was given to bridge both the Tay and the Forth; in both cases Bouch was the engineer selected to design the bridge.

Tay Bridge Edit

 
Original Tay Bridge from the north
 
Fallen Tay Bridge from the north

Bouch designed the first Tay Rail Bridge while working for the North British Railway, and the official opening took place in May 1878. Queen Victoria travelled over it in late June 1879, and she awarded him a knighthood in recognition of his achievement. The bridge collapsed on 28 December 1879, in the Tay Bridge disaster, when it was hit by strong side winds. A train was travelling over it at the time, and 75 people died.

The subsequent public inquiry revealed that the contractors to the railway company sacrificed safety and durability to save costs. Sloppy work practices, such as poor casting of the metal, and the re-use of girders dropped into the estuary during construction, were factors in the bridge's collapse.

The inquiry concluded that the bridge was "badly designed, badly built, and badly maintained". The entire "high girders" section, in which trains ran inside the girders rather than on top of them, fell during the accident, taking the train with it. Analysis of the archives has shown that the design, which featured cast-iron columns with integral lugs holding the tie bars, was a critical mistake, because cast iron is brittle under tension. Many similar bridges had been built using cast-iron columns and wrought iron tie bars, but none used that particular design detail. Gustave Eiffel built many such bridges in France in the 1860s, some surviving and still carrying railway traffic.

Being the engineer, Thomas Bouch was blamed for the collapse of the Tay bridge. His assistant, Charles Meik, conveyed the impression that he "was aptly named", implying that he had no real influence over the design and construction.

Aftermath of the disaster Edit

South Esk Viaduct Edit

After the inquiry, Bouch rapidly removed and reinforced similar lugs on the new bridge he had built, the South Esk Viaduct, at Montrose, but after another inspection, the bridge was demolished and replaced.

Tay Bridge Edit

The remains of the original Tay bridge were demolished and replaced by an entirely new design by William Henry Barlow and his son Crawford Barlow. Some of the wrought iron girders were re-used in the new double track bridge by cutting them in half and re-welding to form wider structures for the track. The brick and masonry piers from the old bridge were left as breakwaters for the new piers, which were monocoques of wrought iron and steel.

Forth Bridge Edit

Bouch's design for a suspension bridge to take a railway across the Firth of Forth, had been accepted and the foundation stone laid, but the project was cancelled following the Tay Bridge disaster. One of the piers still remains at the site. A different design, a cantilever bridge, was drawn up by Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler. The Forth Bridge was completed in 1890.

Other works Edit

 
Bouch's tomb in the Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh

Bouch also seems to have been involved in the design of pleasure piers. He designed Portobello Pier in 1869, which opened in 1871. The structure rusted badly and by 1917 was uneconomic to repair and was demolished.[10]

Family Edit

Thomas was a brother of William Bouch, the railway engine designer.[11]

Death Edit

Thomas Bouch bought a country house in Moffat, "his health", already not good, "more rapidly gave way... under the shock and distress of mind" caused by the disaster. However he kept offices in Edinburgh, at 111 George Street, his Edinburgh address being 6 Oxford Terrace, near Dean Bridge.[12]

He died at his house in Moffat on 30 October 1880 a few months after the public inquiry into the disaster finished.[1][13] He is buried very close by, in Dean Cemetery. "In his death", said the journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers, "the profession has to lament one who, though perhaps carrying his works nearer to the margin of safety than many others would have done, displayed boldness, originality and resource in a high degree, and bore a distinguished part in the later development of the railway system".[1]

See also Edit

References Edit

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Memoirs of Deceased Members" (PDF). Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers. PART 1. 63 (1): 301–8. January 1881. ISSN 1753-7843. Retrieved 17 February 2012.[permanent dead link]
  2. ^ Marshall, John (1989). The Guinness Railway Book. Enfield: Guinness Books. ISBN 0-8511-2359-7. OCLC 24175552.
  3. ^ George Parker Bidder; not to be confused with the lawyer (his son)who represented Bouch at the Tay Bridge Inquiry
  4. ^ a b c Hoole, K (1978). A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: Volume IV The North East. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. p. 237. ISBN 0-7153-7746-9.
  5. ^ a b Joy, David (1983). A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: Volume XIV The Lake Counties. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. p. 270. ISBN 0-946537-02-X.
  6. ^ "Cutting the First Sod of the Eden Valley Railway by Lord Brougham". Carlisle Journal. 6 August 1858. p. 5.
  7. ^ a picture of the viaduct under construction [1] gives the clearest idea of what these looked like when done properly
  8. ^ Humber, William (1870). Complete Treatise on Cast and Wrought Iron Bridge Construction &c Volume 1. London: Longwood. p. 264.
  9. ^ "Facsimile" (PDF). railwaysarchive.co.uk. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  10. ^ "Pier we go again at Portobello". The Scotsman. 9 December 2005. Retrieved 5 September 2015.
  11. ^ "Brief Biographies of Mechanical Engineers". www.steamindex.com.
  12. ^ Edinburgh Post Office Directory 1880
  13. ^ Bouch, Thomas (DNB00)

Sources Edit

  • Shipway, J S, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press (2004)
  • Lewis, Peter R, Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay, Tempus (2004)
  • Rapley, John, Thomas Bouch: The Builder of the Tay Bridge, Tempus (2007)

thomas, bouch, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, news, newspapers, books, scholar, jstor, july, 2010, . This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Thomas Bouch news newspapers books scholar JSTOR July 2010 Learn how and when to remove this template message Sir Thomas Bouch ˈ b aʊ tʃ 25 February 1822 30 October 1880 was a British railway engineer He was born in Thursby near Carlisle Cumberland 1 and lived in Edinburgh As manager of the Edinburgh and Northern Railway he introduced the first roll on roll off train ferry service in the world Subsequently as a consulting engineer he helped develop the caisson and popularised the use of lattice girders in railway bridges He was knighted after the successful completion of the first Tay Railway Bridge but his reputation was destroyed by the subsequent Tay Bridge disaster in which 75 people are believed to have died as a result of defects in design construction and maintenance for all of which Bouch was held responsible He died within 18 months of being knighted Sir Thomas BouchBorn 1822 02 25 25 February 1822Thursby Cumberland EnglandDied30 October 1880 1880 10 30 aged 58 Moffat ScotlandOccupationEngineerEngineering careerDisciplineCivil engineerStructural engineerInstitutionsInstitution of Civil Engineers Associate 1850 Member 1858 ProjectsWaverley Station Tay Rail Bridge Contents 1 Early career 2 Railway and bridge designer 3 Tay Bridge 3 1 Aftermath of the disaster 3 1 1 South Esk Viaduct 3 1 2 Tay Bridge 3 1 3 Forth Bridge 4 Other works 5 Family 6 Death 7 See also 8 References 8 1 SourcesEarly career Edit nbsp Bouch s pioneering ferry rampBouch s father a retired sea captain kept the Ship Inn at Thursby and Thomas was educated locally Thursby and then Carlisle before at the age of 17 beginning his civil engineering career as assistant to one of the engineers constructing the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway After a short spell working in Leeds 1844 45 he was for four years one of the Resident Engineers on the Stockton and Darlington Railway leaving in 1849 to become manager and engineer of the Edinburgh and Northern Railway one of the precursors of the North British Railway 1 He introduced the first roll on roll off train ferries in the world across the Firth of Forth from Granton to Burntisland in Fife 3 February 1850 2 page needed Others had had similar ideas but Bouch put them into effect and did so with an attention to detail such as design of the ferry slip which led a subsequent President of the Institution of Civil Engineers 3 to settle any dispute over priority of invention with the observation that there was little merit in a simple conception of this kind compared with a work practically carried out in all its details and brought to perfection 1 Railway and bridge designer EditBouch then set up on his own as a railway engineer working chiefly in Scotland and Northern England Lines he designed include four connecting lines all built by separate companies which together allowed a direct connection between the West Cumbrian haematite mines and the area served by the Stockton and Darlington which was behind them the Darlington and Barnard Castle Railway 20 miles completed 1856 4 the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway from a junction near West Auckland via Barnard Castle over Stainmore via Kirkby Stephen to a junction with the West Coast Main Line at Tebay 50 miles completed 1861 Barnard Castle Tebay 1863 remainder total cost 666 879 4 This included his viaduct over the Gaunless the Eden Valley Railway Kirkby Stephen to Penrith 22 miles completed 1862 cost 204 803 4 the Cockermouth Keswick and Penrith Railway 31 miles including 135 bridges completed 1864 constructed for 267 000 5 His response to a toast at a dinner after the cutting of the first sod on the Eden Railway gave his philosophy on the engineering of those lines The works were all of a light and inexpensive character and if he gave them a first class railway one upon which any speed attainable by a locomotive engine could be run with perfect safety and ease if he gave it without any extravagance then he should only have done his duty but if he failed then he should deserve all the obloquy and discredit attaching to the failure of light works Mr Whitwell had spoken of his character as a maker of cheap railways but in giving a cheap Eden Valley railway he had relied entirely upon the easy district and not on inferiority of the works The line would be carried out in the most permanent and substantial manner possible 6 He made considerable use of lattice girder bridges both with conventional masonry piers and with iron lattice piers the most notable examples of the latter being on the Stainmore line the Deepdale 7 and Belah Viaducts 1 A contemporary treatise on iron bridges 8 praised the detailed engineering of the Belah viaduct piers and described the viaduct as one of the lightest and cheapest of the kind that had ever been erected Elsewhere Bouch s forte was cheapness and an ability to construct branch lines at a capital cost that might allow them to pay their way especially if operated frugally In 1854 Bouch advised the directors of the Peebles Railway that the company should work the line themselves as they could do so much more economically than a large undertaking 5 Examples included branches to St Andrews to Leven and to Peebles the Peebles line being described in his obituary as long the pattern for cheap construction 1 This could leave over optimistic clients with a railway designed and built to a price and not making enough money to support proper maintenance and hence laying up problems for itself as an accident on the St Andrews Railway 9 showed Bouch did the initial survey for the Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway laid out tramway systems in Edinburgh Glasgow Dundee and London and designed the Redheugh viaduct a road bridge across the Tyne at the same height as and not far upstream of Stephenson s High Level Bridge He also designed Hownes Gill Viaduct in Consett County Durham which at 700 feet 210 m long and using a 12 arch design constructed in brick carried the Stanhope and Tyne Railway 175 feet 53 m above Hownsgill Today it forms part of the Sea to Sea Cycle Route Bouch returned repeatedly to the problem of bridging the two great East Coast firths Eventually authorisation was given to bridge both the Tay and the Forth in both cases Bouch was the engineer selected to design the bridge Tay Bridge Edit nbsp Original Tay Bridge from the north nbsp Fallen Tay Bridge from the northBouch designed the first Tay Rail Bridge while working for the North British Railway and the official opening took place in May 1878 Queen Victoria travelled over it in late June 1879 and she awarded him a knighthood in recognition of his achievement The bridge collapsed on 28 December 1879 in the Tay Bridge disaster when it was hit by strong side winds A train was travelling over it at the time and 75 people died The subsequent public inquiry revealed that the contractors to the railway company sacrificed safety and durability to save costs Sloppy work practices such as poor casting of the metal and the re use of girders dropped into the estuary during construction were factors in the bridge s collapse The inquiry concluded that the bridge was badly designed badly built and badly maintained The entire high girders section in which trains ran inside the girders rather than on top of them fell during the accident taking the train with it Analysis of the archives has shown that the design which featured cast iron columns with integral lugs holding the tie bars was a critical mistake because cast iron is brittle under tension Many similar bridges had been built using cast iron columns and wrought iron tie bars but none used that particular design detail Gustave Eiffel built many such bridges in France in the 1860s some surviving and still carrying railway traffic Being the engineer Thomas Bouch was blamed for the collapse of the Tay bridge His assistant Charles Meik conveyed the impression that he was aptly named implying that he had no real influence over the design and construction Aftermath of the disaster Edit South Esk Viaduct Edit After the inquiry Bouch rapidly removed and reinforced similar lugs on the new bridge he had built the South Esk Viaduct at Montrose but after another inspection the bridge was demolished and replaced Tay Bridge Edit The remains of the original Tay bridge were demolished and replaced by an entirely new design by William Henry Barlow and his son Crawford Barlow Some of the wrought iron girders were re used in the new double track bridge by cutting them in half and re welding to form wider structures for the track The brick and masonry piers from the old bridge were left as breakwaters for the new piers which were monocoques of wrought iron and steel Forth Bridge Edit Bouch s design for a suspension bridge to take a railway across the Firth of Forth had been accepted and the foundation stone laid but the project was cancelled following the Tay Bridge disaster One of the piers still remains at the site A different design a cantilever bridge was drawn up by Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler The Forth Bridge was completed in 1890 Other works Edit nbsp Bouch s tomb in the Dean Cemetery EdinburghBouch also seems to have been involved in the design of pleasure piers He designed Portobello Pier in 1869 which opened in 1871 The structure rusted badly and by 1917 was uneconomic to repair and was demolished 10 Family EditThomas was a brother of William Bouch the railway engine designer 11 Death EditThomas Bouch bought a country house in Moffat his health already not good more rapidly gave way under the shock and distress of mind caused by the disaster However he kept offices in Edinburgh at 111 George Street his Edinburgh address being 6 Oxford Terrace near Dean Bridge 12 He died at his house in Moffat on 30 October 1880 a few months after the public inquiry into the disaster finished 1 13 He is buried very close by in Dean Cemetery In his death said the journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers the profession has to lament one who though perhaps carrying his works nearer to the margin of safety than many others would have done displayed boldness originality and resource in a high degree and bore a distinguished part in the later development of the railway system 1 See also EditTay Bridge disaster Tay Railway BridgeReferences Edit a b c d e f g Memoirs of Deceased Members PDF Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers PART 1 63 1 301 8 January 1881 ISSN 1753 7843 Retrieved 17 February 2012 permanent dead link Marshall John 1989 The Guinness Railway Book Enfield Guinness Books ISBN 0 8511 2359 7 OCLC 24175552 George Parker Bidder not to be confused with the lawyer his son who represented Bouch at the Tay Bridge Inquiry a b c Hoole K 1978 A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain Volume IV The North East Newton Abbot David amp Charles p 237 ISBN 0 7153 7746 9 a b Joy David 1983 A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain Volume XIV The Lake Counties Newton Abbot David amp Charles p 270 ISBN 0 946537 02 X Cutting the First Sod of the Eden Valley Railway by Lord Brougham Carlisle Journal 6 August 1858 p 5 a picture of the viaduct under construction 1 gives the clearest idea of what these looked like when done properly Humber William 1870 Complete Treatise on Cast and Wrought Iron Bridge Construction amp c Volume 1 London Longwood p 264 Facsimile PDF railwaysarchive co uk Retrieved 7 September 2019 Pier we go again at Portobello The Scotsman 9 December 2005 Retrieved 5 September 2015 Brief Biographies of Mechanical Engineers www steamindex com Edinburgh Post Office Directory 1880 Bouch Thomas DNB00 Sources Edit Shipway J S The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press 2004 Lewis Peter R Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay Tempus 2004 Rapley John Thomas Bouch The Builder of the Tay Bridge Tempus 2007 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Thomas Bouch amp oldid 1100900630, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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