The reason for building the Falkirk Wheel was to restore navigation across Scotland using the Forth and Clyde Canal and the Union Canal.
The two canals were once linked at Falkirk by a flight of 11 locks that were spread out over a distance of 1.5km. These locks had decayed so much that they had been removed in 1933, breaking the link between the canals. So the challenge was how to link the two canals when the Forth and Clyde Canal was 35m below the level of the Union Canal.
British Waterways could have just built a new flight of locks but that would have been time consuming and very expensive. Instead the decision was taken to connect the two canals using a boat lift. So a Millennium project was created and the Falkirk wheel was built.
The Falkirk Wheel was a Millennium funded project and it is the world’s first and only rotating boat lift. It was officially opened by the Queen on 24 May 2002.
How the wheel works
The Falkirk Wheel was a Millennium funded project and it is the world’s first and only rotating boat lift. It was officially opened by the Queen on 24 May 2002.
How the wheel works
Boats on the Union Canal enter the Wheel’s upper gondola and they are lowered, with the water that they are floating in, to the Forth and Clyde canal basin below. At the same time, an equal weight is lifted up in the lower gondola. This works because the combined ‘boat plus water’ or ‘water alone’ is carefully calculated in both gondolas so they balance exactly.
Each gondola runs on small wheels inside a single curved rail on the inner edge of the opening on each arm. This is designed to make sure that the gondolas always stay horizontal as any friction or sudden movement could cause the gondola to stick or tip over. A series of linked cogs have been built into the wheel to act as a back up system and to make sure this can never happen.
Behind the arm closest to the aqueduct are hidden two 8 metre diameter cogs attached to which is one end of each gondola. A third cog of exactly the same size is in the centre and this is attached to the main upright. There are two smaller cogs fitted in the spaces between with teeth that fit into the adjacent cog and push against each other. This means they turn around the cog that is fixed in the centre. As a result the two gondolas turn at exactly the same speed in the opposite direction to the Wheel.
Considering the size of the Wheel it uses a very small amount of energy to turn. A group of ten hydraulic motors inside the central spine provide about 1.5kw of electricity to turn it.
