When will they learn?

A few weeks ago I talked about a cast iron railway bridge failing. Well here's another one. Christ, don't they get it? On June 11, 1860 an empty coal train running between Leamington Spa and Kenilworth (yeah really) broke through the bridge deck and thence through the whole she-bang into the road below. The only 2 fatalities were the engineer and brakeman, crushed at the bottom of the pile. Apparently the empty cars piled up to the height of the bridge.

This was a hybrid bridge, that is to say, it had wooden trestles supported on cast iron girders. This bridge actually had been repaired when cracks were spotted in the cast iron. And to heap more crap onto the pile, cast iron bridges were known to be prone to failure, and, quite honestly, they made shitty bridges. Engineers had the Dee bridge collapse nearly 15 years earlier to learn from.

I could end this now but it took 3 MORE catastrophic failures and almost 20 more years before someone cried stop. When engineers fanned out across the country to see what the state of cast iron rail bridges were they found several thousand more. A massive series of upgrades and replacement ensued.