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Rotating boat lift in Scotland

The Falkirk Wheel (Scottish Gaelic: Cuibhle na h Eaglaise Brice) is a rotating boat lift in Tamfourhill, Falkirk, in central Scotland, connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. It reconnects the two canals for the first time since the 1930s. It opened in 2002 as part of the Millennium Link project. The plan to regenerate central Scotland's canals and reconnect Glasgow with Edinburgh was led by British Waterways with support and funding from seven local authorities, the Scottish Enterprise Network, the European Regional Development Fund, and the Millennium Commission. Planners decided early on to create a dramatic 21st century landmark structure to reconnect the canals, instead of simply recreating the historic lock flight. The wheel raises boats by , but the Union Canal is still higher than the aqueduct which meets the wheel. Boats must also pass through a pair of locks between the top of the wheel and the Union Canal. The Falkirk Wheel is the only rotating boat lift of its kind in the world, and one of two working boat lifts in the United Kingdom, the other being the Anderton Boat Lift.

The two canals served by the wheel were previously connected by a series of 11 locks. With a difference in height, it required of water per run and took most of a day to pass through the flight. By the 1930s these had fallen into disuse, and the locks were dismantled in 1933. and by the mid 1970s the Union Canal was filled in at both ends, rendered impassable by culverts in two places and run in pipes under a housing estate. The British Waterways Board (BWB) came into existence on 1 January 1963, the day the Forth and Clyde Canal was closed, with the objective of finding a broad strategy for the future of canals in the United Kingdom. Restoration of sea to sea navigation was deemed too expensive at the time, but there were to be no further restrictions on its use. In 1996, when sufficient funds had been accumulated, the Commission invited applications to "do anything they thought desirable to support worthwhile causes which would mark the year 2000 and the start of the new millennium." The plans called for the canals to be opened to their original operating dimensions, with of headroom above the water. The whole project had a budget of £78 million. On 14 February 1997, the Commission announced it would support the Link with £32 million of funding, 42% of the project cost. The Wheel and its associated basin was priced at £17 million, more than a fifth of the total budget. Another £46 million had to be raised in the next two years before construction could commence, with contributions from BWB, seven local councils, Scottish Enterprise, and private donations being augmented by £8.6 million from the European Regional Development Fund. After being asked to reconsider, a 20 strong team of architects and engineers was assembled by British Waterways. Under the leadership of Tony Kettle from architects RMJM, the initial concepts and images were created with the mechanical concepts proposed by the design team from Butterley and M G Bennetts. This was an intense period of work with the final design concept completed in a three week period during the summer of 1999. The final design was a co operative effort between the British Waterways Board, engineering consultants Arup, Butterley Engineering and RMJM. Diagrams of gear systems that had been proposed in the very first concepts were modelled by Kettle using his 8 year old daughter's Lego. Drawings and artist impressions were shown to clients and funders. The visitor centre was designed by another RMJM architect, Paul Stallan. Inspirations for the design include a double headed Celtic axe (a bearded axe), the propeller of a ship and the ribcage of a whale. Kettle described the Wheel as "a beautiful, organic flowing thing, like the spine of a fish," Since 2007, the Falkirk Wheel has been featured on the obverse of the new series of £50 notes issued by the Bank of Scotland. The series of notes commemorates Scottish engineering achievements with illustrations of bridges in Scotland such as the Glenfinnan Viaduct and the Forth Bridge.

In March 1999 Donald Dewar, the Secretary of State for Scotland, cut the first sod of turf to begin work at lock 31 on the Forth and Clyde Canal. The wheel was fully constructed and assembled at the Butterley Engineering plant in Ripley, Derbyshire. The structure was then dismantled in the summer of 2001, and transported on 35 lorry loads to Falkirk, before being reassembled into five sections on the ground and lifted into place. Construction of the canal required of excavation, a canal tunnel of diameter, aqueducts of and , three sets of locks and a number of bridges, as well as of access roads. of loosely packed backfill from the mining operations containing large sandstone boulders was not considered adequately solid foundation for the size of the structure, so deep foundations with thirty concrete piles socketed onto the bedrock were used. The damage, which cost £350,000 to repair, resulted in the dry well being flooded, damaging electrical and hydraulic equipment.

The wheel has an overall diameter of and consists of two opposing arms extending beyond the central axle and taking the shape of a Celtic inspired, double headed axe. Two sets of these axe shaped arms are connected to a diameter central axle of length Two diametrically opposed water filled caissons, each with a capacity of , are fitted between the ends of the arms. The caissons or gondolas always carry a combined weight of of water and boats, with the gondolas themselves each weighing It takes to power ten hydraulic motors, which consume per half turn, roughly the same as boiling eight kettles of water. The wheel raises or lowers boats a total of , and two subsequent locks raise or lower boats another .

Watertight doors at each end match doors located on the upper structure and lower dock pit. Due to space concerns, where a normal hinged door would dramatically reduce the useful length of the caisson, vertically rising hinged doors were chosen. The doors are raised from a recess in the base of the caisson and powered by a hydraulic lance when docked.

The area housing the machinery to drive the wheel is located in the final pillar of the aqueduct, and contains seven chambers connected by ladders. Each end of each caisson is supported on small wheels, which run on rails on the inside face of the diameter holes at the ends of the arms. Since the wheel opened, around 5.5 million people have visited and 1.3 million have taken a boat trip, with around 400,000 people visiting the wheel annually.

The wheel has been mentioned on Smithsonian Channel in the United States twice since 2017. The first was Aerial Britain when the episode covered Scotland in 2017. The second was How Did They Build That? as part of the "Arctic Structure and Auditoria" episode which aired in 2021. It was also described in detail in the series Impossible Engineering (Series 5, Episode 15) aired in 2020. The wheel provided the inspiration for the "monorail elevator" in Bethesda's Fallout 76 computer game.