1810 Ten Locks, 1900-11 Inclined Plane and Museum near Foxton, UK

10 Locks: (Satellite, 12,682 photos!)

Incline Plane: (Satellite)

"Two staircases of five locks each make this the largest staircase on the British canal system." [forgot to note my source]

Three comments on a post:

1, Andy Cole

2, Nigel Powell, cropped

3, Andy Cole
Here’s my view from the bridge Nigel. Caen Hill. Did this last year. 29 locks. Hard work but worth it.

 

Bruce Jackson posted
The Foxton Flight Locks in England are two sets of five stepped locks with a basin in the middle, allowing boats to pass at the halfway point.

The inclined plane was built in 1900 to allow larger boats, increase the capacity and reduce water usage. But another bottleneck on the canal remained so the additional capacity was never used. Since the locks were good enough and cheaper to operate, the lift closed in 1911. [fipt_lift]

fipt

Paul Allen, Aug 2023

Neptune's Staircase Locks and bobtail bridges on Caledonian Canal near Fort William, Scotland

(Satellite, 7,716 photos)

AtlasObscura, AEROID / CC BY-SA 3.0

For  the love of Narrowboats posted

Neptune's Staircase...

Neptune's Staircase  is a staircase lock comprising eight locks on the Caledonian Canal.

Built by Thomas Telford between 1803 and 1822, it is the longest staircase lock in Britain. The system was originally hand-powered but has been converted to hydraulic operation.

The current lock gates weigh 22 tons each, and require a team of at least three lock-keepers to operate the staircase. They usually operate on an "efficiency basis"; that is, they try either to fill each cut with ascending boats or with descending boats, or to allow for passing, i.e. a dropping craft to pass a rising craft on the same fill/empty cycle.

image credit... Pierre Lesage

Satellite

BritainExpress
"Neptune's Staircase is a series of 8 locks on the Caledonian Canal...The locks were designed by the famous Scottish engineer Thomas Telford and made to handle a change in elevation of 64 feet (19.5m). It is the longest staircase lock in Britain at over a quarter-mile in length (447m) and takes boats about 90 minutes to navigate from top to bottom (or vice-versa). The Staircase took 19 years to build, starting in 1803 and ending in 1822....Telford's design called for a depth of 20 feet (9m) but in the name of cutting costs, the actual finished depth was just 14 feet (roughly 4.5m). This cost-cutting proved shortsighted, as the shallow depth meant that the canal was unusable by most of the large ships being built when the canal was opened....The Caledonian Canal spans the Great Glen, linking Fort William to Inverness. It was designed by Telford to ease boat transport at a time when the Napoleonic Wars threatened British shipping. By travelling up the Canal boats could forego the dangerous trip around the north of Scotland."

A view looking down the staircase. It is near the southern end of the canal.

ScottishCanals

Street View, Jun 2017

The above street view was taken from a bobtail bridge. Note that the railroad bridge is also a bobtail bridge.

Satellite

A video of that bridge opening up.

barry watt, Oct 2023

The railroad bridge is also worth noting.

Street View, Mar 2023

I'm goint to "park" this 2;59 video about the Great Glen fault here for now. I assume this is the "straight line" on which the Caledonian Canal was built.

Bingley, UK: 1774 Five Rise Locks

(Satellite)

For the love of Narrowboats posted

Bingley five Rise locks

The steepest staircase locks on the 127 mile long  Leeds & Liverpool canal.

Opened in 1774....when apparently a crowd of 30,000 people attended to celebrate!

Ann Carter: Loved doing the Bingley five rise but what I found more arduous was locking up Tardebigge 30 of them in 3.6km. Did them numerous times and have the plaque as a momento!!

Judith Cooke-Sanderson: Ann Carter Started our honeymoon on Tardebigge! Guess who did the locks!

Tricia Brookes: I am NOT a waterbaby but these boats were the love of my life. And operating the locks the best workout ever. No gym required..

Hayley Smith commented on the above post
My favourite walk

Hayley commented on her comment
Whatever the weather always beautiful

The lift is high enough that the sill becomes exposed.

Nathan Legge, Jun 2022

Boats have to be careful to clear the sill when they go down.

For the love of Narrowboats posted

Just a reminder....

As beautiful as the canal network is it can also be a dangerous place.....

Watch those cills!

Tony Green: We saw someone tie up tight at the top of a lock - wasn’t pretty when the water went out.

2002 Falkirk Wheel (Boat Lift), Roughcastle Tunnel and a Double Lock in Scotland

Wheel: (Satellite)

Tunnel: (Satellite)

Locks: (Satellite)

Street View, Apr 2021

For the love of Narrowboats posted
Falkirk wheel....79ft [24m] lift/fall in one go.
Only rotating boat lift of its kind in the world, and one of two working boat lifts in the UK.
[Over 2000 comments!]

Charlie Pate commented on the above post
Was there a couple of weeks ago, loved it and definitely a place to visit.

traveling-savage
"Standing almost exactly in the center of the triangle formed by Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Stirling, the Falkirk Wheel is more than just a structural curiosity. The Falkirk Wheel is the culmination of a project to reconnect Glasgow and Edinburgh by waterway, and it joins the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal by replacing the previous system of 11 locks that were dismantled in the 1930s."
The wheel "was designed to look like a double-headed Celtic axe."
We can see the gears that are used to keep the gondola level.

BritishHeritage
"As Scotland’s industrial output expanded following the Industrial Revolution, the traditional way of moving goods around cheaply and quickly was by canal. By the 1830s some 200,000 passengers and 3.3 million tons of goods were carried on canals annually....With the advent of the railways, canals fell out of use and the locks were eventually dismantled in 1933. As the 20th century drew to a close, however, they began to be used again for purely recreational purposes. British Waterways, the company responsible for the canals, decided that the Millennium should be marked by an iconic project that would be a memorial fit for the occasion. The outcome was the Millennium Link, an ambitious project to restore the canal system and reconnect Scotland’s two largest cities at a cost of around $135 million.The Wheel, costing $28 million, is the Link’s central feature."

BritishHeritage
You can take a 50-minute ride on the Archimedes up the lift and through the Roughcastle Tunnel and return.
"The canal ride also offers glimpses of the remains of the Antonine Wall, once the most northerly frontier of the Roman Empire, built on the orders of the Emperor Antoninus in AD 142. Parts of it were later incorporated into the Forth & Clyde Canal during the 17th century, but now the remains are preserved wherever possible. In practical terms, the four-yard-high earth wall, deep ditch and regular fortifications built along its length proved no barrier to the marauding Picts. Consequently, it was abandoned after just two decades." The tunnel was built to minimize the impact on the Antonine Wall.

lindahall, image credited to mjm.com
"Primary credit for the final design is usually given to architect Tony Kettle of the architectural firm RMJM.  It is often said that Kettle made his initial model of the gearing with pieces from his 8-year-old daughter's Lego set.  Whenever you see a minor detail like "8-year-old daughter" repeated over and over in different articles, that is usually a good sign that the story is undocumented, and probably contrived, but who knows, maybe it is true.  It is documented that when Kettle gave a tour of the wheel to Scottish school-kids in 2015, he gave each of them a bag of Lego pieces to build a model of the Wheel’s mechanism.  I read once that his original Lego model was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2012, but I cannot find any corroboration of that or an image of the original model on exhibit.  Wikipedia has a photo of a Lego model built by someone else ten years after, but that is not quite the same thing.  It would be nice if Kettle would verify or deny the story himself; if that has occurred, it doesn’t seem to have made it to the internet."

Highway Engineering Discoveries posted
The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift in Tamfourhill, Falkirk, in central Scotland, connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal.

"The wheel was constructed and fully assembled at the Butterley Engineering plant in Derbyshire. It was then dismantled and driven to Falkirk in 35 lorry loads. Workers reassembled it into 5 sections which were lifted into place. As the wheel rotates in alternate directions, the changing load can cause stress to parts of the structure. To avoid fatigue – weakening caused by repeatedly applied loads – engineers bolted sections together instead of welding them." Each gondola holds the equivalent of an Olympic swimming pool. [ice]

I passed on two videos that started with talking head(s) and found this one. The intro ends at 0:52. This video is done talking about this lift at 7:36. The remainder of the video is about other canals.

16:04 video @ 1:27

Facebook reel and 0:30 video

Llangollen Canal on 1795 Pontcysyllte Aqueduct over River Dee

(Satellite, 18,660 photos)

Nice photo via unesco

This Facebook post has some photos in the comments.

Nickey.com posted
Narrow boats crossing the Llangollen Canal on Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, North East Wales. See More: nickeyscircle.com/pontcysyllte-aqueduct-in-wales/
Nickey.com posted
Express Way Explorers posted
Glynis Waghorn: “Drove” a canal boat across here on a very windy day and walkers had to keep pushing the boat away from the walkway as the wind was blowing the boat against the side. Scary, memorable and fun 🤩
For the love of Narrowboats posted

Stunning view of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

Finished in 1805 after a 10 year design and build program and is the longest aqueduct in the UK. Designed by Thomas Telford and William Jessop....although many just accredit it to the former. 

The original plan was to create a series of locks down both sides of the valley to an embankment that would carry the Ellesmere Canal over the River Dee....that would have been one hell of a set of locks.. After Telford was hired the plan was changed to an aqueduct that would create an uninterrupted waterway straight across the valley. Despite considerable public skepticism, Telford was confident his construction method would work because he had previously built a cast-iron trough aqueduct – the Longdon-on-Tern Aqueduct on the Shrewsbury Canal.

Granted World Heritage status in 2009

"Its nineteen cast-iron spans carry the waterway 126 feet / 38.4 metres above the river, and for two centuries it remained the tallest navigable aqueduct in the world....It is the first great masterpiece of civil engineer Thomas Telford (1757–1834) and formed the basis of his outstanding international reputation." [cadw]

"The aqueduct is 1,007ft (307m) long....Telford's design for the aqueduct saw workers build 18 slender stone piers [columns] 125ft (38m) high. To save weight and material the piers were hollow from about 70ft (21m). The canal itself was carried in a trough made of cast iron plates. The trough was 12ft (3.7m) wide and 5.5ft(1.7m) deep." [ice]

One of the many photos on TimeTravelTurtle:

abcboathire
[The arches were constructed with four cast-iron segments.]

 

Historical Events By the Day posted

November 26, 1805

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct Opens in Wales

Having taken ten years to build, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct towers over the River Dee valley in Wrexham, Wales. A feat of civil engineering, it is still in use more than two centuries later, allowing boats to cross the Llangollen Canal approximately one-hundred-twenty feet above the valley.

The aqueduct consists of a narrow cast iron trough supported by stone columns and bordered by a railed path that is built so horses can tow canal boats. The span occasionally closes for maintenance. It is it emptied by a plug in one of the highest spans and is opened to drain the canal water into the River Dee below, for inspection and maintenance of the trough.

When my wife and I visited England, I was surprised by how much the old canal system was still used for recreation. I've since learned that many people live on the canal in a houseboat. Some have a permanent mooring, but some move at least every two weeks.

bbc, arpingstone        historic-uk also has this photo
[This is another source that put the opening date at 1805 instead of 1795. Was the aqueduct done in 1795, but it couldn't be effectively used until 1805 when the canal was finished?]

 

Nickey.com

 

Duck & Cover, Growing Up in the Atomic Age posted
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Great Britain, one of the greatest feats of engineering, spans the Dee Valley and has been in use for over 200 years. The aqueduct is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Sally Vernon: The Wynn's went over it and did a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8Z3D0IH2Os

The Ocean Buff posted

The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, completed in 1805, is one of the most remarkable feats of civil engineering from the Industrial Revolution. Spanning 307 meters (1,007 feet) and standing 38 meters (126 feet) above the River Dee in Wales, it remains the longest and highest aqueduct in Britain. Designed by Thomas Telford, with assistance from William Jessop, it utilized revolutionary cast-iron construction to carry the Llangollen Canal across the Dee Valley.

Supported by 18 stone piers, the aqueduct features a cast-iron trough to hold the waterway, an innovative design choice that allowed for its considerable height and structural durability. The construction was both ambitious and risky for its time, but Telford’s use of hollow piers and cast iron significantly reduced the weight while ensuring strength.

The aqueduct not only connected the local industries in Wales to the English canal network but also became an enduring symbol of British engineering prowess. It remains a World Heritage Site and continues to attract visitors who admire its design and scenic views.

Brian Byrne commented on the above post
I've done it a few times. This was last year.

David John Mant commented on the above post
My photo September 1972.

Why can't I see a tow path? 

Back Roads Country Life posted

Not for the faint-hearted! Canoeing across the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in Llangollen - with a 126ft drop on either side - has to be on your bucket list 👊🏴

Great shot by Arron Gary Coe!

Bridges Now and Then shared

Abandoned Places posted

Not for the faint-hearted! Canoeing across the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in Llangollen - with a 126ft drop on either side - has to be on your bucket list Great shot by Arron Gary Coe!

Colin David Shaw: I volunteer there every Sunday and was there yesterday. Far from being abandoned it is CRT's 2nd most visited location in the country with around 500,000 visitors per year.

Canoeing across is safe, as canoeists are sitting at water level with most of their body weight well below the edge of the trough. Paddleboarding across is NOT permitted though, not even sitting or kneeling on the board as body weight is much higher than in a canoe.

Nick Thorne commented on the above post
Visited in 2016. Amazing!

Mar 2024:

12:07 video @ 0:57
327. The highest canal aqueduct in the world just got emptied!
It is drained every 20 years for a full inspection of the cast iron trough.

 

@ 2:43

@ 2:57

For future reference: Chirk Aqueduct and Tunnel