All aboard as the Zig Zag steams ahead again

Once described in Australia as the eighth wonder of the world, the grand old Zig Zag railway has been eerily quiet for a decade.

But the evocative chug of steam engines and trill of train whistles are set to return to the NSW Blue Mountains on May 27, when the 154-year-old railway reopens to the public for the first time in 10 years.

“It’s an honour and a privilege to lead the Zig Zag Railway into the next chapter as a national icon,” acting chief executive Daniel Zolfel said on Saturday.

“Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of Zig Zag and one of the driving forces behind me getting involved as a volunteer was so that I could leave it behind for my own children.”

Volunteers have long been upgrading the station at the foot of the mountains near Lithgow, restoring the tracks, and painting the trains to return the heritage railway to its former glory.

Chairman Lee Burton said he was proud of the small group of people who got the Zig Zag back on track.

“I can’t wait to once again share our historic railway with not only the people of Lithgow and NSW but from all over Australia and beyond,” he said.

The railway was closed to visitors in 2012 due to stricter rail regulations and rising operational costs, and was severely damaged by bushfires and storms in later years.

The Gospers Mountain fire that tore through the mountains during Black Summer in 2019 destroyed thousands of sleepers, along with signals and buildings.

“One thing that wasn’t lost was the spirit and determination of Zig Zag’s volunteers who dusted down their work gear and came back even more determined to see the railway re-open,” the railway group wrote on the third anniversary of the fire last year.

Despite the challenges, the work continued and the Office of National Rail Safety Regulation this month granted it full accreditation to run as a tourist line.

Passengers will soon take in sweeping views of the mountains from steam locomotive AC16 218, known as The Yank, one of two surviving engines out of 20 imported from the US in 1943.

“The Zig Zag railway is one of NSW’s greatest engineering feats,” local MP Paul Toole told NSW parliament this week.

“The Zig Zag railway will once again be celebrated as part of our heritage well into the future.”

It first opened in October 1869, lauded as an early technological triumph as trains moved people and produce to and from Sydney over steep rocky cliffs and sandstone viaducts.

In 1910 a deviation bypassed the inefficient railway and it was turned into a reserve until a volunteer group opened a tourist passage in the 1970s.

A national newspaper article from 1947 looked back at the early days of the railway: “The Australians of the 1870s considered the Zig Zag as the eighth wonder of the world.”

The reinvigorated Zig Zag will run three 90-minute trips on Saturdays and Sundays every fortnight.