An eerie list of items washed ashore after the Tay Rail Bridge Disaster is featured in an exhibition at Dundee’s Central Library.
The exhibition, which was arranged to coincide with the anniversary of the disaster and the memorial services on both sides of the Tay last week, gives a haunting insight into the tragedy.
Documents and photographs on display include a list of the items taken from the water and photographs used in the inquiry after the bridge collapsed during a storm on December 28, 1879.
Amina Shah of the library’s local history department said: “The exhibition was put up just before the memorial went up and it has been really busy both before and afterwards.
“The disaster is something the people of Dundee have always been fascinated about but I don’t think everyone knows they can follow up that interest by having a look at what we have in the exhibition.
“We have a lot of interesting documents in the library and the list of items recovered is quite spooky.
“It notes things like, ‘one silk handkerchief’ and pocket watches and things like that. These are things that people lost which washed ashore and their relatives would have come to collect.
“It is all so real, it sends shivers down your spine.”
For some families, details of the recovered watches, handkerchiefs and other personal effects played a big part in identifying those who lost their lives.
The names of the 59 known victims are recorded on the six granite stones that make up the new memorials in Wormit and at Riverside, but there is some debate about how many people actually died when the bridge’s high girders gave way, taking the train from Burntisland with them.
There were no survivors and some of the bodies were never recovered from the water. The only memorials to the victims were erected last week on the 134th anniversary of the tragedy.
The exhibition, at the Central Library at Wellgate, will be taken down on Thursday.