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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.
>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!
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.
Which reminds me of a weekend I took a few years ago where we drove to Edinburgh from Manchester on day 1 then up to Arisaig on day 2 to camp on the beach - then back to Edinburgh for a wedding on day 3 and then back to Arisaig the next day to continue the long weekend. Then full day drive back to Manchester.
I did see a Reddit thing where some tourists were planning to stay in the Lake District and visit Edinburgh and Stonehenge, all during winter.
Could've been ragebait, to be fair - they weren't interested when people pointed out that things like weather, hours of daylight, travel time were all going to be against them (or even that the Lake District is a pretty tourist-friendly place to start with).
That's nothing, I had some people ask me if they could drive from Edinburgh to Rome for the day!
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?
The A9 is actually pretty scary in parts because it alternates between dual carriageway and single carriageway and people have been known to get that wrong and thing they are on a dual carriageway when it is a single carriageway...
I've done that and I've driven on the A9 hundreds if not thousands of times.
What's worse is that the inbuilt mapping in a lot of new cars think bits of it are 70mph dual carriageway when it's still single carriageway, and vice-versa.
Same - driven up and down there countless times, but I still sometimes get alarmed on some of the dual carriageway parts where you can't see the other carriageway and I have a momentary panic of "This is a dual carriageway, isn't it?".
> My understanding is A roads in the UK are much like USA interstates.
Not in Scotland, some of them aren't dualled (just a single carriageway in each direction), narrow, windey, full of terrible potholes and animals you can hit etc... its a 5-6 hour drive in reality
source: Live in Edinburgh
Google Maps says between 5 and 6 hours and 227 miles - doing that in 3.5 hours would be averaging 65mph. Good luck with that, especially when the speed limit on the A9 itself is 60 mph for cars!
The US interstate is probably more comparable with UK motorways.
I can safely do it in good conditions in six hours and I'd consider myself a very experienced driver for that route, having driven from Skye to Glasgow or Edinburgh and back a couple of times a week for years.
Absolutely, doing it in half that time would be madness though!
Both Apple and Google Maps greatly underestimate travel times on anything other than perfectly straight motorways. If you've never driven here before you can at least double their estimate, easily - and that assumes you are at least reasonably proficient at driving on the left at all.
The A9 is the most dangerous road in Europe, and you'll be doing 50mph at most along that because there's nowhere to overtake and that's the maximum speed trucks can go at, so you'll end up in a queue behind a truck.
Depending on the route you take, you might go through Inverness, in which case once you get off the A9 most of the road you'll be on looks like this, for about 120 miles: https://maps.app.goo.gl/9L5cSejT1eyAVR2E7
Once you get to Dalwhinnie you can turn off the A9 and start heading across to the A82, which is really pretty especially in the snow but will be mostly road like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qv1L21jk59EEAHZs9
Notice how it's not actually wide enough for two cars? But that's still a 60mph road, although you'd be lucky to be getting up to more than about 50mph.
And you'll be driving on the wrong side of the road, in an unfamiliar car, with a manual gearbox.
Good luck.
While you're there, also see the Kelpies in Helix park: https://www.thehelix.co.uk/
> why would you ever go to Falkirk?
Callendar House, Falkirk Wheel, the Kelpies...
Also not far from Culross or Stirling, which also work as a nice day out.
whispers Stirling castle is better than Edinburgh castle
Why whisper? Everyone knows Stirling castle is better.
Some friends and I used to cycle to it from Kirkintilloch, after fuelling up in the Brexitspoons on the high street, and then a quick pitstop to take on another pint or so of fuel at Auchenstarry because it's a hell of a long run to the next town (Bonnybridge, Banknock being a bit out of the way).
Ahahah "Brexitspoons". Never heard it before but it's brilliant!
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!
It still exists, the building at least. Ran past it yesterday. Remember it used to be Mathiesons team room for many years.
oh! and this is the first time I can remember someone discussing York Cafe on HN!
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 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.
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.
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 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_Empi... -> 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://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agricola.Campaigns.8...
And for those wondering how different the inhabitants north of the wall were to the rest of the inhabitants of isles at the time.
"Our findings support a prevailing view that the Picts descended from Iron Age groups in Britain and Ireland." - https://theconversation.com/dna-study-sheds-light-on-scotlan...
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-attr...
The UK's canal network as a whole is fantastic, and definitely worth a day out on if you've got the 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.
That's what I meant, but you clarified it better :-)
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
I really liked this one in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: 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.
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.
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.
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
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine#Co...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick#Puffing_Dev...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Telford
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury_Flaxmill_Maltings
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.
> 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 ;)
> 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
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/
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.
i believe the self-balancing properties are a core aspect of any (boat) lift, whether rotating or not.
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
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.
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"...
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.
> so the boats are narrow, proportionally
Hence the name "narrowboat".
Leisure only, there hasn't been commercial traffic on that canal for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Canal_(Scotland)
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 British canal system became largely obsolete when the Railways came. Partly because the railway companies bought the canals and closed them to strengthen their monopoly. The canals were restored and reopened by enthusiasts for leisure boating, and in this is still going on. This is strengthened by the tow paths being legal rights of way, and walking them is very popular.
Canal boats had no engines, they were pulled by horses and very slow and dependent on a lot of horse care and feeding. Some of the early static steam engines were used to pump water up the canals to re-use it in locks, and there were lock keepers to employ and dredging to do, so it's not even as if the canals were a sunk cost and had almost no running costs.
I'd not be surprised that industrialists would do such a thing as buy up the competition and shut it down, but I'd be a bit surprised if canals were much competition after railways really came in?
Deindustrialization, triggered by depletion. The thing about mines is they don't last forever, and if you build your industry near the mines that supply it it becomes uneconomic once the mine is depleted.
Also, the world got a lot bigger, to the extent that a tiny canal was no longer meaningful.
The population of Scotland as a whole has grown slowly and continuously - nothing comparable to the mass depopulation of Ireland, even when you consider the Highland Clearances. It has however mostly concentrated in the economic centers of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
I'd assume it's just good ol' deindustrialization.
In a nutshell, yep
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.
> 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.
That is true for the English narrow channels which are way too narrow to support any kind of large vessel, but not true in general - the Mittellandkanal in Germany for example still sees a huge amount of traffic and there’s regular infrastructure investment going on into the canal network in many places. One example is the new boat lift in Niederfinow which is not as architecturally beautiful as the Falkirk wheel, but lifts entire river barges.
(The nearest container port is Leith, which is about twenty miles away.)
Grangemouth is the largest container port in Scotland (not very large by global standards) and much closer to Falkirk than Leith?
Grangemouth is the larger container port in Scotland (not very large by global standards) and much closer to Falkirk than Leith?
A young Tom Scott too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO9gARac-w
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.
One of the truly great things from my old homeland. In the year 2000 Falkirk invented the wheel...
There are still some Neanderthals in Falkirk now shouting at hotels.
Yes, sadly aware. It's never a good thing to see the old homeland in the news.
It's like one of those equations where everything cancels out nicely.
It's amazing! But sad to hear of the vandalism that caused significant damage:
That happened 24 years ago.
Indeed, I'd realised, but thank you for clarifying for others.
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