The Falkirk Wheel
scottishcanals.co.uk50 points by scapecast 6 hours ago
50 points by scapecast 6 hours ago
Suprisingly, the "axe head" sections each on one side of the circular top and bottom openings are unnessecary to the functioning, and just there for show.
It's also near a fort on the Antonine Wall, a further-north version of Hadrian's wall- so it's been the shortest route across Britain for quite a long time...
I love that the designer used Lego to demonstrate the mechanism to funders:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel#/media/File:Falk...
While true, the caption also notes this isn't his model.
I'm reading that the model he demonstrated was his (using Legos he bought for his child), but the picture is a reconstruction of that.
One of the truly great things from my old homeland. In the year 2000 Falkirk invented the wheel...
If the area was a major commercial shipping hub once, what's the reason it isn't any more? Depopulation? (If it's depopulation, then was it emigration or was it a fall in birth rates?)
The canals are too small for goods (and a lot of hastle opening/closing locks) - the road and rail networks are way faster.
From Wikipedia:
> The town is at the junction of the Forth and Clyde and Union Canals, a location which proved key to its growth as a centre of heavy industry during the Industrial Revolution. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Falkirk was at the centre of the iron and steel industry, underpinned by the Carron Company in nearby Carron. The company made very many different items, from flat irons to kitchen ranges to fireplaces to benches to railings and many other items, but also carronades for the Royal Navy and, later, manufactured pillar boxes and phone boxes. Within the last fifty years, heavy industry has waned, and the economy relies increasingly on retail and tourism.
So, yes, deindustrialization. But being at a key canal junction doesn't mean much today, since modern railroads and steamships rendered the canals obsolete a century-ish ago.
It's amazing! But sad to hear of the vandalism that caused significant damage:
It's like one of those equations where everything cancels out nicely.
https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-eng...
YouTube version: https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-eng...
I live very near to it, in the summer they have boat trips that take people a trip on one of the two passenger boats.
The kelpies are connected via the canal, maybe 4 miles of locks you have to go through if you want to hire a canal boat to travel from the wheel to the kelpies.
