7 ms·

The Falkirk Wheel

105 points by scapecast 8mo ago

bell-cot 8mo ago
https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-engineering-behind-the-falkirk-wheel https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-eng... YouTube version: https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-engineering-behind-the-falkirk-wheel https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-eng...
- neom 8mo ago
  A young Tom Scott too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO9gARac-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO9gARac-w
HPsquared 8mo ago
It's like one of those equations where everything cancels out nicely.
LeoPanthera 8mo ago
I love that the designer used Lego to demonstrate the mechanism to funders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel#/media/File:FalkirkRotate04.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel#/media/File:Falk...
- sho_hn 8mo ago
  While true, the caption also notes this isn't his model.
  - axus 8mo ago
    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.
    - sho_hn 8mo ago
      That's what I meant, but you clarified it better :-)
profsummergig 8mo ago
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?)
- BigTTYGothGF 8mo ago
  I'd assume it's just good ol' deindustrialization.
  - peanut_merchant 8mo ago
    In a nutshell, yep
- bell-cot 8mo ago
  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.
  - adw 8mo ago
    (The nearest container port is Leith, which is about twenty miles away.)
    - arethuza 8mo ago
      Grangemouth is the larger container port in Scotland (not very large by global standards) and much closer to Falkirk than Leith?
nmstoker 8mo ago
It's amazing! But sad to hear of the vandalism that caused significant damage: https://www.gentles.info/link/Vandals/vandals.html https://www.gentles.info/link/Vandals/vandals.html
- UltraSane 8mo ago
  That happened 24 years ago.
  - nmstoker 8mo ago
    Indeed, I'd realised, but thank you for clarifying for others.
dana321 8mo ago
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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kelpies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kelpies
lazzurs 8mo ago
One of the truly great things from my old homeland. In the year 2000 Falkirk invented the wheel...
- thebruce87m 8mo ago
  There are still some Neanderthals in Falkirk now shouting at hotels.
  - lazzurs 8mo ago
    Yes, sadly aware. It's never a good thing to see the old homeland in the news.
permenant 8mo 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...
- globular-toast 8mo ago
  I have walked across it on the John Muir Way which is highly recommended. I actually didn't really remember what Hadrian's wall was. We always learnt it was to "keep out the Scots", but in fact it represented the Northernmost border of the Roman empire. I had no idea about the Antonine wall, nor that they got that far north.
  - marcus_holmes 8mo ago
    Picts not Scots. The Scots are descended from an Irish Gaelic (Celtic) tribe who migrated from Ireland to Scotland in the 5th Century [0] (when all three of Britain's countries were created, it was a fascinating century). The Romans were there before then, and left before then. The walls they built were to keep the Picts out (though this gets fuzzy - the line between "Pict" and "Briton" isn't as clear as conventional Victorian history books say). One of the interesting things that I heard about the walls, and may or may not be true (I'd be interested if anyone has an update) is that the Romans never explored the top of the island, or sailed around it, and just assumed there was a lot more of it going north. If they'd known how close they were to the end, they might have just conquered all of it, which would probably have been less effort than building those two walls. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scotland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scotland
    - amiga386 8mo ago
      Just to be clear, "Scots" means current denizens of modern Scotland, who are mostly descended from a mixture of Picts and Gaels. It's not the case that the 5th century "Scoti" wiped out everyone else and they're now the only modern "Scots". The Picts and Gaels eventually united under Kenneth MacAlpin as the Kingdom of Alba... which did not include Strathclyde and the Lothians as Scotland has today. Also to be clear to anyone else reading, "Britons" is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Britons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Britons rather than all citizens of modern Britain. These people were predominantly in Strathclyde and Cumbria. I'm not sure how many of them were around in Roman times to be kept out. As you say, the Romans departure from north Britain predates "Scotland". They fought with many different tribes north of Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall. From Ptolemy, we have some of the names they gave these tribes: Taexali, Vacomagi, Caledonii, ... We don't know if the tribes call themselves that. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_during_the_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_during_the_Roman_Empi... -> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Britain.north.peoples.Ptolemy.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Britain.north.people... which is based on a 1467 map, which itself is based on Ptolemy's writing. There was a Roman campaign into northern territories led by Agricola. We know via Tacitus that he (claims to have) soundly defeated "Caledonians" in "Mons Graupius" in 83 AD, which we suspect is one of the Grampian Mountains but we don't know for sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mons_Graupius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mons_Graupius -> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agricola.Campaigns.80.84.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agricola.Campaigns.8...
contrarian1234 8mo ago
Is it just for leisure or commercial traffic? it's a lot smaller than I imagined. I can't picture a river barge fitting in it, but it's hard to tell the scale
- nirse 8mo ago
  Leisure only, there hasn't been commercial traffic on that canal for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Canal_(Scotland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Canal_(Scotland)
- pmyteh 8mo ago
  British canals are smaller than you imagine, and were even when they were commercial waterways. The standard lock widths are only 7ft or 14ft (2.1m/4.3m) so the boats are narrow, proportionally long, and very small compared to a Rhine barge or something. As with the railways, we built early, to a small gauge, and lived with the consequences of that later.
  - ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
    > so the boats are narrow, proportionally Hence the name "narrowboat".
  - arethuza 8mo ago
    And shallower - when my son did rowing for a while on the Union canal they were told that if they capsized to simply "stand up"...
    - jodrellblank 8mo ago
      There was a big canal bank collapse in December, and you can see in news photos the drained bits of the canal around the hole. The boats sitting on the canal bed are barely lower than they are normally when floating. Looks like 4 feet deep. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lvq0yk9dko https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lvq0yk9dko
  - contrarian1234 8mo ago
splonk 8mo ago
I am exactly the type of nerd that is super excited about this kind of engineering, to the point where I visited a couple years ago and rode a boat on the wheel when I happened to be in Scotland. I mentioned having gone to a local in Edinburgh and got a very confused "why would you ever go to Falkirk?" It's a pretty easy half-day trip out of Edinburgh or Glasgow, and I recommend it if you have the time. One fun thing if you have kids is that the playground there has some demonstrations of Archimedean principles, like how an Archimedes screw works. Also, I don't keep many souvenirs of my travels, but I do have a refrigerator magnet of the Falkirk wheel that spins freely. It doubles as a cat toy.
- jimnotgym 8mo ago
  >easy half-day trip out of Edinburgh Another way to think about it is to stop somewhere outside of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is an easy half-day trip away. Walk 200 yards of the Royal Mile from the castle. It just repeats with the same kind of tourist shops for the rest of it. Now get back in your car and go and see some of Scotland!
  - ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
    But don't do the thing that American tourists do where they say "Oh we're staying in Edinburgh and on Wednesday we're going to drive up to Skye to see Dun-vay-gin Castle because it's our ancestral seat because we're totally MacLeods you know" You won't be able to drive from Edinburgh to even Kyle and back in a day, never mind up to Dunvegan. You just won't. I could drive you from Edinburgh to Dunvegan and back in a day but I can absolutely guarantee you're going to hate every single terrifying mile of the journey and you won't get to see much.
    - theoreticalmal 8mo ago
      Apple says Edinburgh to Skye is a 3.5 hour drive, mostly along the A9. My understanding is A roads in the UK are much like USA interstates. What makes the trip terrifying and slower than what Apple says?
extraduder_ire 8mo ago
Even though it solves a very specific problem, I'm surprised this kind of boat lift hasn't been replicated elsewhere. Even just the self-balancing properties of it. Even if just for novelty purposes.
- bnlxbnlx 8mo ago
  i believe the self-balancing properties are a core aspect of any (boat) lift, whether rotating or not.
imurray 8mo ago
The Falkirk Wheel is cool and a fun trip, along with the nearby Kelpies, which were much more striking in person than I'd anticipated. The wheel is a one-of-a-kind, but there are other ways of avoiding having a ladder of flood locks, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_lift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_lift I really liked this one in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_Lift_Lock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_Lift_Lock Built as a real working lift lock (originally 1904), rather than as a tourist attraction. Powered by a little bit of extra water in one of the buckets to tip the balance and drive the pistons.
- Marazan 8mo ago
  Yes, the Kelpies are suprisingly striking. I went along thinking they'd be a modestly interesting thing to see but the scale and sculpture work makes them a real "Wow" moment when you see them up close.
- Dyac 8mo ago
  There's also another unusual way - the Caisson lock. Its design is TERRIFYING. The boat is floated into a tube that get sealed at both ends and then (in the dark..) that tube is winched down into a completely flooded chamber until it (hopefully) lines up with the egress port at the bottom. The tube with the boat in is unsealed and the boat floats out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caisson_lock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caisson_lock
  - imurray 8mo ago
    Ooof, I'd never seen that. Thanks! From the wikipedia link: > The May 1799 test at Oakengates carried a party of investors aboard the vessel, who nearly suffocated before they could be freed. (!) ...and eventually they built a flight of nineteen locks instead, with a steam-powered pump to return water. The lift locks (and Falkirk Wheel) are a really impressive and elegant solution in comparison.
  - jodrellblank 8mo ago
    Oh that is terrifying; interesting, it "was first demonstrated at Oakengates on a now lost section of the Shropshire Canal in England in 1792". That little bit of rural UK was hot and happening from 1700 to 1800 and doing a lot of canal and river transport; it claims some part in the Industrial Revolution. Within 20 miles around Oakengates around that time was: - early good quality cast iron; Abraham Darby in Coalbrookdale in ~1710 smelting iron from low-sulphur coal/coke for the first time, dominating the market in iron pots and pans. - his foundry casting iron parts for early Newcomen steam engines in 1715 [2]. - the first iron bridge in the world[3] in 1781, now a town called Ironbridge. John Wilkinson invented a method of boring accurate cylinders for Bolton & Watt static steam engines, a friend wrote to him about the proposed iron bridge and he funded it. - the first iron boat in 1787 in Brosely; the Trial by the same John Wilkinson, "convincing the unbelievers who were 999 in 1000".[7] - the first iron framed building in the world, ancestor of skyscrapers. Thomas Telford[5] was a surveyor and engineer in the area, took inspiration from the iron bridge and started making other things out of iron, became friends with a flax mill owner whose mill burned down; they decided an iron framed building would be more fire resistant, and they built the first one ever[6] in 1797. - very early high-pressure steam engine and high-pressure steam locomotive. Richard Trevithick around 1800; Coalbrookdale foundries built a static high pressure engine and a high pressure locomotive[4] within a couple of years of his Puffing-devil road locomotive and Pen-y-Darren rail locomotive were trialled in other parts of the UK. Then Regression To The Mean happened and the area faded back into history. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine#Components https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine#Co... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick#Puffing_Devil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick#Puffing_Dev... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Telford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Telford [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury_Flaxmill_Maltings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury_Flaxmill_Maltings [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(barge)#Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(barge)#Notes
aserafini 8mo ago
My Italian grandparents operated a fish, chips and ice cream joint in Falkirk called the York Cafe. It has nothing to do with the article but this is the first time I can remember Falkirk being discussed on HN!
- digitalWestie 8mo ago
  oh! and this is the first time I can remember someone discussing York Cafe on HN!
- dubnerr 8mo ago
  It still exists, the building at least. Ran past it yesterday. Remember it used to be Mathiesons team room for many years.
- naianai 8mo ago
  Used to love going there as a child. Also if your username makes reference to your family name, you probably have quite a lot of relations in the area.
vintagedave 8mo ago
> and the same power it would take to boil eight kettles. Newspaper-style units, but laughter aside, I tried to do the math. If a kettle is rated at 2.5kW, then five minutes of usage (to boil a kettle, or for eight of them do a turn of the bridge) is 2.5kWh * (5/60) * 8 = 1.6kW. My Nissan Leaf stores about 24kWh. So it's about 7% of a Leaf's battery to turn the wheel, or 10km of range. Given mass, perhaps it is finely balanced, and that seems more reasonable than I expected. I am not an electricity expert and will get things mixed up ;)
- jodrellblank 8mo ago
  > Given mass, perhaps it is finely balanced Not only is it balanced, because the boats displace water when they enter, if one side has a boat and the other doesn't, it still balances. Practical Engineering YouTube did a video "the hidden engineering behind the Falkirk wheel" two months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6ZOVbKQhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6ZOVbKQhY
DamnInteresting 8mo ago
I wrote a short piece about this bit of infrastructure a few days shy of 20 years ago: https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/the-falkirk-wheel/ https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/the-falkirk-wheel/
philo23 8mo ago
I'm not sure why the Falkirk Wheel keeps getting posted to HN, but hey I'm not gonna complain! I'll repost what I shared last time though, there's another much older boat lift on the canal network that solves a similar problem of transporting boats from the canal up and down to a river, but built with Victorian engineering instead (though it's been retrofitted a few times) called the Anderton Boat Lift, and it's worth a visit! https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/things-to-do/museums-and-attractions/anderton-boat-lift-and-visitor-centre-cheshire https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/things-to-do/museums-and-attr... The UK's canal network as a whole is fantastic, and definitely worth a day out on if you've got the time.

105 points by scapecast 8mo ago

https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-engineering-behind-the-falkirk-wheel https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-eng... YouTube version: https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-engineering-behind-the-falkirk-wheel https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-eng...

neom 8mo ago
A young Tom Scott too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO9gARac-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO9gARac-w

HPsquared 8mo ago

It's like one of those equations where everything cancels out nicely.

LeoPanthera 8mo ago

I love that the designer used Lego to demonstrate the mechanism to funders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel#/media/File:FalkirkRotate04.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel#/media/File:Falk...

sho_hn 8mo ago
While true, the caption also notes this isn't his model.
- axus 8mo ago
  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.
  - sho_hn 8mo ago
    That's what I meant, but you clarified it better :-)

profsummergig 8mo ago

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?)

BigTTYGothGF 8mo ago
I'd assume it's just good ol' deindustrialization.
- peanut_merchant 8mo ago
  In a nutshell, yep
bell-cot 8mo ago
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.
- adw 8mo ago
  (The nearest container port is Leith, which is about twenty miles away.)
  - arethuza 8mo ago
    Grangemouth is the larger container port in Scotland (not very large by global standards) and much closer to Falkirk than Leith?

nmstoker 8mo ago

It's amazing! But sad to hear of the vandalism that caused significant damage: https://www.gentles.info/link/Vandals/vandals.html https://www.gentles.info/link/Vandals/vandals.html

UltraSane 8mo ago
That happened 24 years ago.
- nmstoker 8mo ago
  Indeed, I'd realised, but thank you for clarifying for others.

dana321 8mo ago

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kelpies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kelpies

lazzurs 8mo ago

One of the truly great things from my old homeland. In the year 2000 Falkirk invented the wheel...

thebruce87m 8mo ago
There are still some Neanderthals in Falkirk now shouting at hotels.
- lazzurs 8mo ago
  Yes, sadly aware. It's never a good thing to see the old homeland in the news.

permenant 8mo 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...

globular-toast 8mo ago
I have walked across it on the John Muir Way which is highly recommended. I actually didn't really remember what Hadrian's wall was. We always learnt it was to "keep out the Scots", but in fact it represented the Northernmost border of the Roman empire. I had no idea about the Antonine wall, nor that they got that far north.
- marcus_holmes 8mo ago
  Picts not Scots. The Scots are descended from an Irish Gaelic (Celtic) tribe who migrated from Ireland to Scotland in the 5th Century [0] (when all three of Britain's countries were created, it was a fascinating century). The Romans were there before then, and left before then. The walls they built were to keep the Picts out (though this gets fuzzy - the line between "Pict" and "Briton" isn't as clear as conventional Victorian history books say). One of the interesting things that I heard about the walls, and may or may not be true (I'd be interested if anyone has an update) is that the Romans never explored the top of the island, or sailed around it, and just assumed there was a lot more of it going north. If they'd known how close they were to the end, they might have just conquered all of it, which would probably have been less effort than building those two walls. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scotland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scotland
  - amiga386 8mo ago
    Just to be clear, "Scots" means current denizens of modern Scotland, who are mostly descended from a mixture of Picts and Gaels. It's not the case that the 5th century "Scoti" wiped out everyone else and they're now the only modern "Scots". The Picts and Gaels eventually united under Kenneth MacAlpin as the Kingdom of Alba... which did not include Strathclyde and the Lothians as Scotland has today. Also to be clear to anyone else reading, "Britons" is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Britons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Britons rather than all citizens of modern Britain. These people were predominantly in Strathclyde and Cumbria. I'm not sure how many of them were around in Roman times to be kept out. As you say, the Romans departure from north Britain predates "Scotland". They fought with many different tribes north of Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall. From Ptolemy, we have some of the names they gave these tribes: Taexali, Vacomagi, Caledonii, ... We don't know if the tribes call themselves that. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_during_the_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_during_the_Roman_Empi... -> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Britain.north.peoples.Ptolemy.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Britain.north.people... which is based on a 1467 map, which itself is based on Ptolemy's writing. There was a Roman campaign into northern territories led by Agricola. We know via Tacitus that he (claims to have) soundly defeated "Caledonians" in "Mons Graupius" in 83 AD, which we suspect is one of the Grampian Mountains but we don't know for sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mons_Graupius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mons_Graupius -> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agricola.Campaigns.80.84.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agricola.Campaigns.8...

contrarian1234 8mo ago

Is it just for leisure or commercial traffic? it's a lot smaller than I imagined. I can't picture a river barge fitting in it, but it's hard to tell the scale

nirse 8mo ago
Leisure only, there hasn't been commercial traffic on that canal for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Canal_(Scotland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Canal_(Scotland)
pmyteh 8mo ago
British canals are smaller than you imagine, and were even when they were commercial waterways. The standard lock widths are only 7ft or 14ft (2.1m/4.3m) so the boats are narrow, proportionally long, and very small compared to a Rhine barge or something. As with the railways, we built early, to a small gauge, and lived with the consequences of that later.
- ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
  > so the boats are narrow, proportionally Hence the name "narrowboat".
- arethuza 8mo ago
  And shallower - when my son did rowing for a while on the Union canal they were told that if they capsized to simply "stand up"...
  - jodrellblank 8mo ago
    There was a big canal bank collapse in December, and you can see in news photos the drained bits of the canal around the hole. The boats sitting on the canal bed are barely lower than they are normally when floating. Looks like 4 feet deep. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lvq0yk9dko https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lvq0yk9dko
- contrarian1234 8mo ago

splonk 8mo ago

I am exactly the type of nerd that is super excited about this kind of engineering, to the point where I visited a couple years ago and rode a boat on the wheel when I happened to be in Scotland. I mentioned having gone to a local in Edinburgh and got a very confused "why would you ever go to Falkirk?" It's a pretty easy half-day trip out of Edinburgh or Glasgow, and I recommend it if you have the time. One fun thing if you have kids is that the playground there has some demonstrations of Archimedean principles, like how an Archimedes screw works. Also, I don't keep many souvenirs of my travels, but I do have a refrigerator magnet of the Falkirk wheel that spins freely. It doubles as a cat toy.

jimnotgym 8mo ago
>easy half-day trip out of Edinburgh Another way to think about it is to stop somewhere outside of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is an easy half-day trip away. Walk 200 yards of the Royal Mile from the castle. It just repeats with the same kind of tourist shops for the rest of it. Now get back in your car and go and see some of Scotland!
- ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
  But don't do the thing that American tourists do where they say "Oh we're staying in Edinburgh and on Wednesday we're going to drive up to Skye to see Dun-vay-gin Castle because it's our ancestral seat because we're totally MacLeods you know" You won't be able to drive from Edinburgh to even Kyle and back in a day, never mind up to Dunvegan. You just won't. I could drive you from Edinburgh to Dunvegan and back in a day but I can absolutely guarantee you're going to hate every single terrifying mile of the journey and you won't get to see much.
  - theoreticalmal 8mo ago
    Apple says Edinburgh to Skye is a 3.5 hour drive, mostly along the A9. My understanding is A roads in the UK are much like USA interstates. What makes the trip terrifying and slower than what Apple says?

extraduder_ire 8mo ago

Even though it solves a very specific problem, I'm surprised this kind of boat lift hasn't been replicated elsewhere. Even just the self-balancing properties of it. Even if just for novelty purposes.

bnlxbnlx 8mo ago
i believe the self-balancing properties are a core aspect of any (boat) lift, whether rotating or not.

imurray 8mo ago

The Falkirk Wheel is cool and a fun trip, along with the nearby Kelpies, which were much more striking in person than I'd anticipated. The wheel is a one-of-a-kind, but there are other ways of avoiding having a ladder of flood locks, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_lift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_lift I really liked this one in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_Lift_Lock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_Lift_Lock Built as a real working lift lock (originally 1904), rather than as a tourist attraction. Powered by a little bit of extra water in one of the buckets to tip the balance and drive the pistons.

Marazan 8mo ago
Yes, the Kelpies are suprisingly striking. I went along thinking they'd be a modestly interesting thing to see but the scale and sculpture work makes them a real "Wow" moment when you see them up close.
Dyac 8mo ago
There's also another unusual way - the Caisson lock. Its design is TERRIFYING. The boat is floated into a tube that get sealed at both ends and then (in the dark..) that tube is winched down into a completely flooded chamber until it (hopefully) lines up with the egress port at the bottom. The tube with the boat in is unsealed and the boat floats out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caisson_lock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caisson_lock
- imurray 8mo ago
  Ooof, I'd never seen that. Thanks! From the wikipedia link: > The May 1799 test at Oakengates carried a party of investors aboard the vessel, who nearly suffocated before they could be freed. (!) ...and eventually they built a flight of nineteen locks instead, with a steam-powered pump to return water. The lift locks (and Falkirk Wheel) are a really impressive and elegant solution in comparison.
- jodrellblank 8mo ago
  Oh that is terrifying; interesting, it "was first demonstrated at Oakengates on a now lost section of the Shropshire Canal in England in 1792". That little bit of rural UK was hot and happening from 1700 to 1800 and doing a lot of canal and river transport; it claims some part in the Industrial Revolution. Within 20 miles around Oakengates around that time was: - early good quality cast iron; Abraham Darby in Coalbrookdale in ~1710 smelting iron from low-sulphur coal/coke for the first time, dominating the market in iron pots and pans. - his foundry casting iron parts for early Newcomen steam engines in 1715 [2]. - the first iron bridge in the world[3] in 1781, now a town called Ironbridge. John Wilkinson invented a method of boring accurate cylinders for Bolton & Watt static steam engines, a friend wrote to him about the proposed iron bridge and he funded it. - the first iron boat in 1787 in Brosely; the Trial by the same John Wilkinson, "convincing the unbelievers who were 999 in 1000".[7] - the first iron framed building in the world, ancestor of skyscrapers. Thomas Telford[5] was a surveyor and engineer in the area, took inspiration from the iron bridge and started making other things out of iron, became friends with a flax mill owner whose mill burned down; they decided an iron framed building would be more fire resistant, and they built the first one ever[6] in 1797. - very early high-pressure steam engine and high-pressure steam locomotive. Richard Trevithick around 1800; Coalbrookdale foundries built a static high pressure engine and a high pressure locomotive[4] within a couple of years of his Puffing-devil road locomotive and Pen-y-Darren rail locomotive were trialled in other parts of the UK. Then Regression To The Mean happened and the area faded back into history. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine#Components https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine#Co... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick#Puffing_Devil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick#Puffing_Dev... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Telford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Telford [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury_Flaxmill_Maltings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury_Flaxmill_Maltings [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(barge)#Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(barge)#Notes

aserafini 8mo ago

My Italian grandparents operated a fish, chips and ice cream joint in Falkirk called the York Cafe. It has nothing to do with the article but this is the first time I can remember Falkirk being discussed on HN!

digitalWestie 8mo ago
oh! and this is the first time I can remember someone discussing York Cafe on HN!
dubnerr 8mo ago
It still exists, the building at least. Ran past it yesterday. Remember it used to be Mathiesons team room for many years.
naianai 8mo ago
Used to love going there as a child. Also if your username makes reference to your family name, you probably have quite a lot of relations in the area.

vintagedave 8mo ago

> and the same power it would take to boil eight kettles. Newspaper-style units, but laughter aside, I tried to do the math. If a kettle is rated at 2.5kW, then five minutes of usage (to boil a kettle, or for eight of them do a turn of the bridge) is 2.5kWh * (5/60) * 8 = 1.6kW. My Nissan Leaf stores about 24kWh. So it's about 7% of a Leaf's battery to turn the wheel, or 10km of range. Given mass, perhaps it is finely balanced, and that seems more reasonable than I expected. I am not an electricity expert and will get things mixed up ;)

jodrellblank 8mo ago
> Given mass, perhaps it is finely balanced Not only is it balanced, because the boats displace water when they enter, if one side has a boat and the other doesn't, it still balances. Practical Engineering YouTube did a video "the hidden engineering behind the Falkirk wheel" two months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6ZOVbKQhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6ZOVbKQhY

DamnInteresting 8mo ago

I wrote a short piece about this bit of infrastructure a few days shy of 20 years ago: https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/the-falkirk-wheel/ https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/the-falkirk-wheel/

philo23 8mo ago

I'm not sure why the Falkirk Wheel keeps getting posted to HN, but hey I'm not gonna complain! I'll repost what I shared last time though, there's another much older boat lift on the canal network that solves a similar problem of transporting boats from the canal up and down to a river, but built with Victorian engineering instead (though it's been retrofitted a few times) called the Anderton Boat Lift, and it's worth a visit! https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/things-to-do/museums-and-attractions/anderton-boat-lift-and-visitor-centre-cheshire https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/things-to-do/museums-and-attr... The UK's canal network as a whole is fantastic, and definitely worth a day out on if you've got the time.