We spent yesterday arvo bush-bashing down to the Zig Zag Railway viaducts above Lithgow, NSW and looking around the place for a few hours.

In this shot you can see the No. 1 Viaduct on the Top Road track. A little further down is the larger No. 2 Viaduct. And on the Bottom Road (which is the train line near the bottom of this pic) is the No. 3 Viaduct.

Comprising rock cuttings, classical sandstone viaducts and tunnels, the Lithgow Zig Zag was, and remains to this day, a magnificent piece of engineering. Construction of this part of the rail system began in 1866 and was completed by the late 1890s. The line was decommissioned in 1910 with the construction of the Ten Tunnels deviation which is still in use today by state rail.

Back in the early 1970s, volunteers worked to bring the line back into operation as an iconic tourist railway which ran for decades, bringing with it tourism dollars to the wider Lithgow area.

In 2013, a huge bushfire swept through the area and destroyed a lot of the infrastructure and equipment used by the Zig Zag Railway. Since that day work has proceeded to slowly bring the tourist train line back into operation It is hoped it'll be up and running again in the next year or so.

Follow @zigzagrailway on Insta and Facebook for updates.

For more pics of this awesome area, check out the 4WD Swagman facebook page.

#zigzagrailway
#lithgow
#stoneviaduct
#railway
#bluemountains
#djimavicpro

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