formally opened. This resulted in a huge realignment of NBR train services; until that date NBR passengers had crossed the Tay by ferry, finally reaching Dundee over the Dundee and Arbroath Railway, aligned to the Caledonian Railway. The Dundee and Arbroath now became jointly owned between the Caledonian and the NBR, as part of Parliamentary safeguarding of the NBR's ultimately semi-independent route to Aberdeen. The triumph turned to disaster on 28 December 1879 when the bridge partly collapsed; 74 or 75 were killed in the train that fell into the Tay. As well as the human tragedy, this was a huge shock to the North British Railway, which was planning the construction of a Forth Bridge at the time, enabling it finally to get an independent line from Edinburgh to Dundee. The Company resolved immediately to rebuild the Tay Bridge; at first it was presumed that this would be repair and reconstruction. The Tay Bridge had been designed by the engineer Thomas Bouch, and the proposed Forth Bridge was also designed by him. As enquiries proceeded, Bouch's shortcomings in the Tay Bridge became more apparent and his Forth Bridge design was not proceeded with. The planned restoration of the Tay Bridge became the planned construction of a new bridge. It was to be double track, and of course wholly the responsibility of the North British Company. On 18 July 1881 the Parliamentary Bill for the replacement Tay Bridge received Royal Assent, and the gloomy mood was dispelled. On 10 June 1887, the first passenger train passed across the new Tay Bridge, and a full public service started from 20 June 1887. The onward route towards Aberdeen had been being prepared, and in March 1881 the line between Arbroath and Kinnaber Junction, north of Montrose, was opened. With the replacement Tay Bridge this was to give the NBR more control over its trains to Aberdeen, although they still had to use running powers over the Caledonian Railway north from Kinnaber, and as yet there was no Forth Bridge. At the time of the fall of the first Tay Bridge, plans for the Forth Bridge were well advanced. Thomas Bouch had been responsible for both designs, and as his culpability in the fall of the Tay Bridge became exposed, the work on the Forth Bridge was suspended. A search for a new design was agreed upon, and the cost of the work