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Zig Zag railway station is a station located on the Blue Mountains Line. The station consists of 2 platforms, in a double side formation. Zig Zag railway station can only be accessed by road via Lithgow as there is no access from the Clarence side of the station. Along with Lapstone & Mount Victoria, Zig Zag is one of the few Blue Mountains Line intercity stations to consist of side platforms instead of one island platform.
The station exists to serve visitors to the narrow (1067mm) gauge Zig Zag Railway, which was formerly part of the Main West line before it was deviated. It is now a tourist railway. Whilst it was closed for several years due to accreditation, bushfire damage from the 2013 State Mine Fires and 2019 Gospers Mountain Fire, as well as severe floods in between, volunteers restored the line in 2023, 11 years after its closure
Even with the deviations, the grade is still 1:42, so heavy freight trains may struggle to climb and need a bank locomotive to attach. Two crossovers are provided to the east to allow bank locomotives to detach. The line also has its sharpest curve to the west of Zig Zag at Cape Horn, with a radius of 160m. This is the tightest radius of any curve on a public railway still in operation in NSW.
History[]
The station first opened on 15 April 1878 as part of the Main West line. It was so named because the railway to the east went through two zig-zags to descend the extremely steep Great Dividing Range. However it was still very steep and the single track was proving to be a bottleneck as the railway expanded. The Ten Tunnels Deviation was built to solve this problem, opening in 16 October 1910, with the station closing on the same day.
In 1959, a new station was built on the same site. In 1972, the Zig Zag Cooperative was formed and took possession of a section of the original railway, turning it into a tourist railway.
Platforms and Services[]
Both platforms are very short, around 6m long. Only the last door of the train will open, as shown by the SP1r code in the timetable. Zig Zag is also a request stop (marked by the a next to the arrival time in the timetable) during the daytime. Trains do not stop at night. You must signal the driver to board the train. To signal a driver, there are instructions on how to alert the driver, although it doesn't have a green light to stop trains at night like it says it does. Behind the instructions, there is a stick with a green disc on top. You must face the green disc away from you horizontally when you hear the bells ringing. If the driver sees you, they will acknowledge you're there by honking two times and stop for you. You then have to put the green disc back and board the train.
| Platform | Line | Stopping Pattern | Notes |
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Services to Central | |
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Services to Lithgow |
Whilst there road access to this station on Aberfield Drive, there is no public transport access that connects with the train service. Buses stop on Chifley Road, 2km away at the other end of the Zig Zag Railway.
| Blue Mountains Line |
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Sydney Metropolitan Blue Mountains area Fleet |