Huggy wrote:I remember the motorway being built, I think the canal is in big pipes under the carriageway.
Icecube wrote:... the pipes carrying the water from the sluice at Cuilhill aren't actually located under the actual M8 (aka the Monkland motorway) but more probably are situated under the bankings of the cuttings running along the northern (east bound lanes) side of it - from Easterhouse Road as far west as Blackhill.
Sorry Huggy, you're wrong about it being under the carriageway.
Icecube is (partly) correct.
The Monkland Canal pipeline between Cuilhill and Port Dundas consists of twin 750mm (or 30" for old-school imperial laddies like yourself Icecube
) diameter pipes with brick access chambers at regular intervals. The pipes are mainly either asbestos cement (primarily the section between Cuilhill and Wardie Road) or reinforced concrete (primarily the section between Wardie Road and Port Dundas), though some small sections are made of other materials such as ductile iron.
It was constructed some years before construction work began on the motorway, though some sections were later re-aligned for various reasons (e.g. to accomodate the line of the motorway carrigeway; to be moved away from new bridge support positions). It had intakes from the disused canal sections at Wardie Road and (just east of) Barlinnie until the early 1970s - these were abandoned ahead of preparatory works beginning for the motorway construction.
Most of the route is located on the southern side of the motorway, though it varies a fair bit in distance from the carriageway, with some sections coming right up to the edge of the hard shoulder and others being located a good bit further back into the embankments. At the Baillieston end, it crosses over to the south side of the motorway just a few hundred yards east of Easterhouse Road (at a point roughly at the very back of Central Car Auction's car parking). It crosses back over to the north side of the motorway at Junction 15 and then runs past the front of Baird Street cop shop before passing through Sighthill Park on its way into the basin. Some of the access chambers are plainly visible (e.g. see
here and
here) - I'd bet that most people who travel along this part of the motorway on a regular basis have noticed them and not even given them a second thought. One of the access chambers is located behind the trees on the southern side of the Junction 13 exit slip road (not visible from the road but can be seen on
Google Maps) - this is actually an overflow chamber, which enables water to be spilled into the motorway drainage via a 450mm diameter pipe.