Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Leeds and Liverpool Canal is 127 miles long, crossing the Pennines to link the cities of Leeds and Liverpool. It includes 91 locks on the main line and was generally built with locks 60 feet long and 14 feet 3 inches wide.
The main line of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was completed in 1816, nearly 50 years after the first public meeting at the Sun Inn in Bradford on the 2nd of July 1766. The connection to the Bridgewater Canal at Leigh opened in 1820, giving access to Manchester and the broader canal network.
James Brindley was appointed chief engineer when the enabling act passed in May 1770, but he died in 1772 before significant progress was made. John Longbotham, Robert Whitworth, Samuel Fletcher, and finally Joseph and James Fletcher all served as engineers across the canal's long construction period.
Construction was halted repeatedly by financial exhaustion, most notably in 1781 when all subscribed funds and loans were spent. The wars with the American colonies and then with France drove up taxes and interest rates, making borrowing difficult. Route disputes between the Liverpool and Bradford committees, and the engineering difficulty of the Foulridge Tunnel and Burnley Embankment, also added years to the project.
The Foulridge Tunnel was the most expensive single item in the entire project, costing £40,000. The tunnel is 1640 yards long and was completed in 1796.
The canal competed successfully with the railways throughout the 19th century because of two advantages: its broad locks, which gave it greater carrying capacity than the other two trans-Pennine canals, and the heavy industry concentrated along its route, which generated steady coal and merchandise traffic. Over a million tons of coal per year were being delivered to Liverpool via the canal in the 1860s.