Well, you are right - the technical execution is more complex.

But then the wheel only seems to be more impressive than the elevator 
because it is better looking, a real beauty ;-)

And the principle is beautiful, too.

Let's compare the technical details:

(Provided the English wikipedia is correct for the Wheel, the German 
wikidepia for the elevator)

                       Wheel / Elevator

Trough capacity:   2 x 250 t / 1 x 2500 t
Lift:                   24 m / 36 m
Build date:             2002 / 1914

Basically the Wheel, impressive as it looks, is quite small compared to the 
rather unspectacular looking elevator. The elevator can lift 10x more 
tonnage. If you take in account that for smaller ships the wheel can bring a 
little ship up and another one down, if there actually >are< two ships there 
at the same time wanting to go into opposite directions, the elevator can 
still shift 5x more tonnage in a single go.

Now, I am no architect, but I guess if you wanted the Falkirk Wheel to shift 
10 times more load, across 1.3 times the distance, the wheel would become 
very heavy indeed. If the troughs were made to hold 2500 t of water the 
supports would have to carry 10x more load. You would have to increase the 
Wheel's diameter to 49 m minimum, and this would add to the forces that 
would have to be absorbed by the Wheel's wings.

A non-rhetoric question:

Has anybody here any idea how much the Wheel's wings or struts would have to 
weigh to replicate the ship elevator's capacity?

"clipka" <ano### [at] anonymousorg> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:4ab65a44$1@news.povray.org...
> TC schrieb:
>> Quite spectacular looking thingy - but the principle is the same as used 
>> here:
>>
>> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiffshebewerk_Niederfinow
>
> It appears a good deal more complicated in the actual implementation: 192 
> counterweights, double cables for safety, and not to forget the additiona 
> worm drives normally running "idle", just in case the second set of cables 
> doesn't hold either. All this is done away by the exceptionally simple 
> construction of the Wheel.
>
> As an aside, by using another caisson as the counterweight you also get 
> effectively twice the capacity for the same total weight.

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