Falkirk Wheel

One of my colleagues told me about the Falkirk Wheel last week and on hearing about it I was intrigued. It is a wheel which acts as a boat lift and takes boats from one canal to the other, consuming energy only as much as required for heating up 8 kettles of water!

The topography of Scotland is filled with mountains and hence a difference in heights of the canals. Since waterways are essential for trade and transport (in olden days), traditionally the boats used to manage through a series of Locks. Locks were compartments created in between, wherein a boat is brought to the end of one canal, huge doors closing in behind so as to not let water pass and the doors ahead opened to fill in the compartment with water and raise the boat to the height of the next canal. This was a time consuming process resulting in a lot of water loss as well.

Hence the wheel was built in Falkirk, which is half hour journey from Edinburgh by train. The wheel itself a huge contraption, panning over 117 ft high, transports the boats within a space of 3 mins and with no water loss. It is built on the Archimedes' principle – ‘Any floating object displaces its own weight of fluid.’ So when a boat enters the lift it displaces its own weight of water and when it is let out into the next canal that amount of water returns to the lift.

The benefits are amazing and the tour guide was very entertaining, she had us in splits throughout those 3 minutes. However what astounded me was that this particular lift is being used for recreation rather than to help actual boats, I guess the waterways aren’t used as much in this day and age. It cost 45 billion pounds to make it and I kept wondering when they would break even!

The icing of the day was we actually saw a private boat making its way through the canals, first used the boat lift and since it wasn’t available for all the locks throughout, we saw it go through a traditional lock system as well. That was awesome.

I especially liked the safety measure they followed, whenever a boat entered into the lift or the locks it was tied to side to avoid the boat crashing on either sides.