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?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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 ;)
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!
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 49.0 ms ] threadYouTube version: https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/11/17/the-hidden-eng...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel#/media/File:Falk...
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.
https://www.gentles.info/link/Vandals/vandals.html
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
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...
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
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.
Even if just for novelty purposes.
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.
It has nothing to do with the article but this is the first time I can remember Falkirk being discussed on HN!
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 ;)
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.