Union Canal, a canal in Edinburgh, Linlithgow, and Stirling shires, going 31½ miles westward from Port-Hopetoun, in the W of the city of Edinburgh, to a junction with the Forth and Clyde Canal at Port-Downie, 1½ mile W by S of Falkirk. Authorised in 1817, and begun to be cut in 1818, it was completed in the early part of 1822, the estimated cost being £235,167, but the actual cost nearly £400,000 up to the time of opening, and £600,000 within four years of that date. It was designed entirely for inland traffic, principally between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and for a long time was often called the Edinburgh and Glasgow Canal. It runs a total distance of only 25 miles measured in a direct line; and it expends the additional 6½ miles of its actual length mainly in sinuosities, designed to maintain the dead level, and to avoid the cost and delays of lockage. It traverses the parishes of St Cuthberts, Colinton, Currie, Ratho, Kirkliston, Uphall, Dalmeny, Abercorn, Linlithgow, Muiravonside, Polmont, and Falkirk; and is flanked, over most of its course, by productive and populous country. It proceeds on a level for 30 miles from Port-Hopetoun; descends 110 feet by 11 locks in the last 1½ mile to Port-Downie; and is 40 feet wide at the water-surface, 20 wide at the bottom, and 5 deep throughout. An aqueduct 65 feet high and 500 long takes it across the Water of Leith; a still grander aqueduct, with 23 arches, takes it across the river Avon; a tunnel 700 yards long takes it through a hill in the neighbourhood of Falkirk; and important cuttings, embankments, and works of masonry occur in many other parts of its course. The traffic on it, from the very commencement, proved uncompensating; was estimated, in the project for its formation, to yield a gross return of £55,000 a year; yielded a natural return, during the first seven years, of less than £17,000 a-year; suffered vast decrease from the opening of the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway; and, a short time afterwards, lost all its passenger department, and diminished greatly in its mercantile and mineral departments. The canal was sold in 1848 to the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway company, and passed, in 1865, along with the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway, to the North British railway company.
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