Talk:Wootton bridge collapse

Spelling?
According to the official report, the name of the village was "Wooton" when the accident occurred, although it's spelt "Wootton" on modern maps. Perhaps we should note this somewhere in the article. Tevildo (talk) 15:37, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Whose opinion is this?
"It is memorable for coming after the Dee bridge disaster of 1847, when another cast iron bridge had failed. Cast iron should not have been used in this safety-critical application, and the design seems very strange, using cast iron where timber baulks would have sufficed. The bridge had been built in 1844, well before the Dee accident, and patched with the angle iron in 1853. The discovery of the cracked girder should have alerted engineers to the problem, and all should have been replaced entirely. "

This reads someones original research and their own conclusions. At best it is paraphrasing an opinionated author. "Cast iron should not have been used in this safety critical application"? Saying "the investigation found that cast iron was a poor choice of material for this application is one thing. Stating unequivocally that cast iron is the wrong choice is outside the parameters of an article like this. Especially since there is nothing wrong with cast iron properly employed. It needs to be used in compression, not tension, and it needs to meet certain quality standards. It's not inherently unsafe material for building. And editorializing on the "strange" design and whether the girders should have been replaced, all out of place here.

Idumea47b (talk) 18:21, 11 September 2023 (UTC)