The Falkirk Wheel

Constructed in 2002, it connected the Forth & Clyde and Union Canals for the first time in 70 years, providing a continuous waterway between Scotland’s two biggest cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Canals have historically played a vital role in transporting people and goods, especially during the Industrial Revolution when canal boats were the most efficient mode of transport available.

Boats enter one of the Wheel's water-filled gondolas and are lowered or raised to the basin below or above. According to Archimedes’ principle, floating objects displace their own weight in water. So when a boat enters the gondola, the weight of water displaced will equal the weight of the boat.

This means that the two gondolas will always weigh the same, even if only one is carrying a boat, provided that the water levels are kept the same.

Electronic sensors monitor water levels in the gondolas to ensure that they remain equal, which is essential to the Wheel’s functioning. The equal weight means the gondolas remain perfectly balanced, so very little energy is required to turn the Wheel.

The Falkirk Wheel turns using a system of gears, which allow the speed of rotation of the 1800-tonne structure to be carefully controlled. The central axle connects to the outer arms and slowly rotates the whole structure at a speed of ⅛ of a revolution per minute.

Two eight-metre wide outer gears orbit a fixed inner gear of the same width. Two smaller gears connect the outer rings together. The Wheel can turn in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction.

In the central machine room there are 10 hydraulic motors, which together provide the power that rotates the central axle. The axle is carried by bearings at both ends and has two arms which extend out to the two gondolas. The axle is completely hollow in order to minimize weight and is big enough for two people to walk through – standing on each other’s shoulders!

An axle is a straight shaft that is fixed in location and is used to mount rotating wheels or gears and hold them in position. You can find axles on almost every type of vehicle.

The Falkirk Wheel’s main axle is 3.8 metres in diameter and 27.3 metres in length. The axle is capable of turning 360 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise.

The Falkirk Wheel lies at the end of a reinforced concrete aqueduct that connects, via the Roughcastle Tunnel and a double staircase lock, to the Union Canal. At the time of its development, the aqueduct and tunnel were the first to be built in the United Kingdom for over 100 years. 

The building of these components was necessary to protect valued woodland and the remains of the Antonine Wall – the northernmost Roman fortification in the UK.

When the gondola reaches the aqueduct, a hydraulic clamp locks the gondola in place while the space between the gondola gate and the aqueduct gate is filled with water. Once the water levels are equal, the gates are lowered.

The aqueduct is around 100 metres long, 1.5 metres deep and holds over 1 million litres of water. The water management system diverts excess water to the lower basin on the Forth & Clyde Canal, keeping the Wheel perfectly balanced.

The arches on the Wheel’s aqueduct are purely aesthetic and are said to resemble the ribcage of a whale!

The Kelpies are 30-metre-high horse-head sculptures, standing next to a new extension of the Forth & Clyde Canal. They are a part of The Helix, a 740-acre park of forests and pathways. The sculptures were designed by Andy Scott and are a monument to the contribution of horses to Scotland’s industrial and agricultural heritage. The site was opened in 2014 and has since attracted over 2.5 million visitors.

The Kelpie is a Scottish mythological creature, supposedly a shape-shifting aquatic spirit that appears in lochs and waterways. It has usually been described as appearing as a horse, but is able to adopt human form.

"I see The Kelpies as a personification of local and national equine history, of the lost industries of Scotland. I also envisage them as a symbol of modern Scotland – proud and majestic, of the people and the land.” Andy Scott, Sculptor.

The sculptures were modeled on two working Clydesdale horses from Pollok Park in Glasgow, named Duke and Baron. Baron is the horse with its head up and Duke is the one with its head down.

The Kelpies weigh 300 tonnes each and were constructed in Sheffield from 928 unique panels of stainless steel, all uniformly 0.6cm thick. The steel was heated to very high temperatures in order to create the subtle curves of the sculpture.