On September 11, 1297, during the First War of Scottish Independence, the Scottish armies of Andrew de Moray and William Wallace met and defeated the English under the command of John de Warenne and Hugh de Cressingham at The Battle of Stirling Bridge.
I came across this little piece of historical bridge history whilst looking up train wrecks. For now, this story, though trainless, is cooler.
Stirling bridge crossed the river Forth near, not surprisingly, a town called Stirling. The English, coming off a victory at the Battle of Dunbar, took the Scottish for granted here. Now the Brits could have easily flanked the Scottish by putting together an attack force to cross the river downstream where it was shallower and would allow reasonable passage. The oddball truth of why it didn't happen is that Cressingham was England's treasurer in Scotland and didn't want the extra expense. He figured they could could just blast over the bridge. Lesson: Never let your accountants run the battle.
The Scottish waited until as many English were over the bridge that they could handle and basically separated them form the bridge, blocked off the bridge (which was easy because it was only 2 horses wide) and hacked them to pieces. They had carefully sawed through supporting timbers (a la Wile E Coyote) and when the bridge was crowded with English soldiers the signal was given and Scottish saboteurs knocked down the final timbers and the bridge went down. After that, whoever tried to cross was on their own. One brave Welshman, Marmaduke Tweng, did cross and as the battle was lost ordered the bridges final destruction and high tailed it South.
I'll see if I can find a war and a train and a bridge next time.
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