page_title: Union Canal (Scotland)
section_title: Closure and demise
hierarchical_section_title: Union Canal (Scotland) / History / Closure and demise
caption_attribution_description: English: Part of OS sheet XXX.2 showing the flight of canal locks at Falkirk and a section of the Antonine Wall between Rough Castle and Camelon at a scale of 1:2,500 or about 25 inches to one mile. Second Edition, 1897
context_page_description: The Union Canal, full name the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal, is a canal in Scotland, running from Falkirk to Edinburgh, constructed to bring minerals, especially coal, to the capital. It was opened in 1822 and was initially successful, but the construction of railways, particularly the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, which opened in 1842, diminished its value as a transport medium. It fell into slow commercial decline and was closed to commercial traffic in 1933. It was officially closed in 1965. The canal is listed as three individual scheduled monuments by Historic Scotland according to the three former counties, Midlothian, West Lothian and Stirlingshire, through which it flows.
  It has benefited from a general revival of interest in canals and, as a result of the Millennium Link, was reopened in 2001 and reconnected to the Forth and Clyde Canal in 2002 by the Falkirk Wheel. It is now in popular use for leisure purposes.
context_section_description: In 1842 the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway opened taking much of the traffic away from the canal with passenger traffic effectively disappearing. Although the waterway was still used to transport industrial minerals to Edinburgh, goods requiring more haste were put on to trains. The canal was acquired by the E&GR in 1849. Industrial traffic continued to use the waterway until after the First World War. However, with the closure of Port Hamilton and Port Hopetoun (the main basins in Edinburgh) in 1921, commercial traffic steadily declined. In 1933, just over a hundred years since its opening, the Union Canal was officially closed to commercial traffic. In the 1960s, the abandoned flight of 11 locks at Falkirk, which connected the Union to the Forth and Clyde, was filled in. The canal was culverted for the Wester Hailes housing development in the western outskirts of Edinburgh and for the M8 motorway near Broxburn. Formal closure came in 1965 and throughout the 1970s and 1980s the canal was left in a deteriorated state.
  However, after a campaign was started by groups and local communities to improve the canal, work was carried out to restore the network during the 1990s. This culminated with the millennium project to reinstate the link between the  Union Canal to the Forth and Clyde Canal with a boat lift called the Falkirk Wheel.
caption: Flight of locks at Falkirk on an old map
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