Zig Zag Railway

Donald's mum Joan has been staying with us for a couple of weeks.  One of her desires whilst in Sydney was to ride on the Zig Zag Railway in the Blue Mountains.  So by car and motor bike we headed up the Bells Line of Road into the cool crisp mountains.  Donald on Black Betty, Joan, the boys and I in the car (the Horrendous Falcon only seats five).  We arrived in the mountains to the sound of Bell birds and the smells of fresh green bush land.  After enduring the "When do we get there?" we arrived at Clarence Station, Platform 9 3/4. The train arrived to a bunch of excited passengers waiting at the station.  

The boys couldn't wait to get into the old carriages.  

The train's engine itself was made in Ipswich, Queensland and the carriages were made by Queensland Rail.  

Seeing the baggage racks on the train brought back memories of catching the train to school in Brisbane, Queensland.  The school kids used to get the old deisel trains with the pull down windows and creaky doors while the city going passengers got the nice new electric trains.  The Zig Zag train was a bit more fun though.  With charcoal dust and smoke blowing through the windows, kids getting ash and coal dust in their eyes, going through tunnels in pitch black as there were no lights on in the carriage, the train rattled and chuffed along.  Poor Toby got a little freaked out by the noise and motion and especially in the dark tunnels.  Lucky Joan had a torch in her bag which he clung to for dear life.

Once the train got to the Top Points station, the engine had to disconnect and swap to the end of the carriages so it could pull the train down to the the Bottom Points station.  Which is why it's called the Zig Zag railway.  Then once at the bottom it had to disconnect again and swap to pull us back up to Top Points station to repeat the same process again.  It was just fun watching, waiting and hopping on and off the train.

Just before we went through the last tunnel back up the hill the train stopped to pick up some Scouts who were walking the trail to the bottom station. As we went into the tunnel the train was working it's hardest so the carriages got smoked out, ash, coal dust and heat from the engine fogged up our glasses.

It was a lot of fun despite the ash, smoke and coal dust it was all part of the experience.