User:MIDI/Drafts/Roughcastle Tunnel

The Roughcastle Tunnel is a canal tunnel on the Union Canal near Falkirk. It was built in 2002 as part of the Millennium Link project which included the adjacent Falkirk Wheel.

History
The tunnel takes its name from the nearby Rough Castle Fort on the Antonine Wall. Use of the Union Canal declined rapidly after the opening of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in 1838. In 1933, the canal was closed to commercial traffic and in the 1960s, Junction Locks—a flight of 11 locks—at Falkirk was removed and the land used for housing developments.

The Millennium Link project sought to reinstate a waterways link between the Union Canal and the Forth and Clyde Canal. With the flight of locks removed, the Falkirk Wheel was designed to traverse the 35 m terrain between the two waterways. Whereas a cutting was used by the lock flight to pass across the Antonine Wall, a tunnel was chosen as the method for the new canal.

Description
The tunnel was constructed in 2002 as part of the Millennium Link project. The 168 m tunnel takes the canal under the Antonine Wall and the Glasgow–Edinburgh via Falkirk line. At the tunnel's north end is a basin, immediately beyond which is the approach aqueduct to the Falkirk Wheel. To the south of the tunnel is a two-chamber staircase lock, above which the link joins the course of the old canal.