The Scott Russell Aqueduct is an aqueduct carrying the Union Canal over the Edinburgh City Bypass, west of

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

History

The aqueduct was opened in May 1986 to carry the canal over the new Edinburgh City Bypass. This required a great deal of faith in the future of the canal, which culminated with the Millennium Link project when the Union Canal was connected with the

Forth and Clyde Canal The Forth and Clyde Canal is a canal opened in 1790, crossing central Scotland; it provided a route for the seagoing vessels of the day between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde at the narrowest part of the Scottish Lowlands. This allow ...

to form a coast to coast link. One proposal had been to not build an aqueduct to carry the canal across the new road, but instead build a

marina A marina (from Spanish , Portuguese and Italian : "related to the sea") is a dock or basin with moorings and supplies for yachts and small boats. A marina differs from a port in that a marina does not handle large passenger ships or cargo ...

to the west of the bypass. It was named after the Scottish naval engineer

John Scott Russell John Scott Russell (9 May 1808, Parkhead, Glasgow – 8 June 1882, Ventnor, Isle of Wight) was a Scottish civil engineer, naval architecture, naval architect and shipbuilder who built ''SS Great Eastern, Great Eastern'' in collaboration with Is ...

in a ceremony on 12 July 1995, who had discovered the

soliton In mathematics and physics, a soliton is a nonlinear, self-reinforcing, localized wave packet that is , in that it preserves its shape while propagating freely, at constant velocity, and recovers it even after collisions with other such local ...

or solitary wave near Bridge 11 on the Union Canal in 1834. Russell had observed a bow wave continue to travel forward at a speed of when a boat stopped moving, and called it the "

wave of translation John Scott Russell (9 May 1808, Parkhead, Glasgow – 8 June 1882, Ventnor, Isle of Wight) was a Scottish civil engineer, naval architect and shipbuilder who built '' Great Eastern'' in collaboration with Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He made the di ...

Design

The aqueduct is the width of a single canal boat, and crosses the Bypass at a slight angle. It has five spans supported on three piers.

References

External links

{{commons category Navigable aqueducts in Scotland Bridges in Edinburgh Bridges completed in 1987 1987 establishments in Scotland