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Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 610014
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/610014
The Forth & Clyde and Edinburgh & Glasgow Union Canals ceased to be connected when the Falkirk flight of
locks (11 by 10 ft rise; 110 ft rise) on the latter was closed in 1933. In 2002 this connection was restored by means of the landmark ‘Falkirk Wheel’ boat lift which formed the centrepiece of a £78 million ‘Millennium Link’ regeneration of the Lowland canals. The Wheel comprises two 35m long rotating arms rigidly connected to each end of a 3.8m diameter central axle 28m long. The arms support, within semicircular gondolas, two water-filled boat-carrying caissons with double watertight doors at each end. These allow transfer of the boats between the caissons and the aqueduct above and the basin below.
The total weight to be moved is about 1800 tonnes, but the machine is essentially a balanced unit with the loads
to be driven by the motors deriving from wind and friction being a small fraction of this figure. There are also
loads caused by the unequal balance of water in the gondolas. The drive system, designed to operate with the
worst foreseeable combination of these loads, operates by means of ten hydraulic gearbox units driving one end of the main axle. Under normal traffic conditions they rotate the arms 1808 in about four minutes.
Each gondola of the Wheel sits in two circular tracks. When the arms are rotated the tendency of wind and friction to move the gondolas out of position is counteracted by the gears at the end of each gondola holding them horizontal and preventing oscillation. Each gondola, which contains about 250 000 litres of water, will transfer up to four boats at a time in about 15 minutes. The design life of the Wheel is 120 years. It is now one of Scotland’s most visited tourist attractions. The project, which includes two locks above the Wheel and one below, and a 168m sprayed-concrete tunnel under the Roman Antonine Wall and Edinburgh & Glasgow main line railway, was carried out for British Waterways – Director Scotland, Jim Stirling, and designed by Arup Scotland. The contractors were Morrison Bachy- Soletanche. The steelwork was fabricated by Butterley
Engineering, Ripley, Derbyshire.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
