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The Falkirk Wheel

scottishcanals.co.uk

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Re: The Falkirk Wheel

#61

Post by ErroneousBosh »

theoreticalmal wrote: post #52
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

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?

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.

Re: The Falkirk Wheel

#62

Post by arethuza »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #40
jimnotgym wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 d…

That's nothing, I had some people ask me if they could drive from Edinburgh to Rome for the day!

Re: The Falkirk Wheel

#63

Post by arethuza »

theoreticalmal wrote: post #52
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

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...

Re: The Falkirk Wheel

#64

Post by imurray »

Dyac wrote: post #57
imurray wrote: post #38

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 l…

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

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.

Re: The Falkirk Wheel

#66

Post by jodrellblank »

Dyac wrote: post #57
imurray wrote: post #38

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 l…

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

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

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(barge)#Notes

Re: The Falkirk Wheel

#67

Post by jodrellblank »

arethuza wrote: post #36
pmyteh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lvq0yk9dko

Re: The Falkirk Wheel

#68

Post by jodrellblank »

jimnotgym wrote: post #35
profsummergig wrote: post #6

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?

Re: The Falkirk Wheel

#69

Post by philo23 »

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.

Re: The Falkirk Wheel

#70

Post by ErroneousBosh »

arethuza wrote: post #63
theoreticalmal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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