Thomas Bouch

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Thomas Bouch bigraphy, stories - railway engineer

Thomas Bouch : biography

25 February 1822 – 30 October 1880

Sir Thomas Bouch ( 25 February 1822 – 30 October 1880) was a British railway engineer in Victorian Britain.

He was born in Thursby, near Carlisle, Cumberland, England 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 name is chiefly remembered for 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, with his reputation destroyed.

Railway and bridge designer

Bouch then set up on his own as a railway engineer, working chiefly in Scotland and Northern England. Lines he designed which were actually built included most notably 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)
  • 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) This included his viaduct over the Gaunless.)
  • the Eden Valley Railway (Kirkby Stephen to Penrith, 22 miles, completed 1862, cost £204,803)
  • the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway (31 miles (including 135 bridges), completed 1864, constructed for £267,000)

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 Deepdalea picture of the viaduct under construction gives the clearest idea of what these looked like when done properly and Belah Viaducts. A contemporary treatise on iron bridges 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). 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”. However, 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 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 the Hownsgill railway viaduct in Consett, County Durham which carried the Stanhope & Tyne Railway 175 feet above Hownsgill. The viaduct is 700 feet long and follows a 12 arch design constructed in brick. Today it forms part of the Sea to Sea Cycle Route which crosses from Whitehaven or Workington on the west coast to Sunderland or Tynemouth on the east coast – for three miles between Keswick and Threlkeld it follows the along the disused track and bridges of the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway as laid out by Bouch.