The Lithgow Zig Zag is a heritage-listed former

zig zag A zigzag is a pattern made up of small corners at variable angles, though constant within the zigzag, tracing a path between two parallel lines; it can be described as both jagged and fairly regular. In geometry, this pattern is described as a ...

railway line Rail terminology is a form of technical terminology. The difference between the American term ''railroad'' and the international term ''railway'' (used by the International Union of Railways and English-speaking countries outside the United Sta ...

built near Lithgow on the Great Western Line of

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

in Australia. The zig zag line operated between 1869 and 1910, to overcome an otherwise insurmountable climb and descent on the western side of the Blue Mountains. It was designed by

John Whitton John Whitton (1820, near Wakefield, Yorkshire, England – 20 February 1898), an Anglo–Australian railway engineer, was the Engineer-in-Charge for the New South Wales Government Railways, serving between 1856 and 1890, considered the Father of ...

and built from 1863 to 1869 by Patrick Higgins as contractor. It is also known as the Great Zig Zag Railway and Reserves and Zig Zag Railway. The property is owned by Department of Planning and Infrastructure (State Government). It was added to the

New South Wales State Heritage Register The New South Wales State Heritage Register, also known as NSW State Heritage Register, is a heritage list of places in the state of New South Wales, Australia, that are protected by New South Wales legislation, generally covered by the Heritag ...

on 2 April 1999. Part of the railway line is now used by the

Zig Zag Railway The Zig Zag Railway is an Australian heritage railway, situated near Lithgow, New South Wales. It was opened by the not-for-profit Zig Zag Railway Co-op as an unpaid volunteer-staffed heritage railway in October 1975, using the alignment of th ...

, a narrow gauge tourist railway.

History

Construction

The original plan by the Engineer-in-Charge of

New South Wales Government Railways The New South Wales Government Railways (NSWGR) was the agency of the Government of New South Wales that administered rail transport in New South Wales, Australia, between 1855 and 1932. Management The agency was managed by a range of differen ...

, had been to build a tunnel. However, this was beyond the resources of the Colonial Government at the time. The

alternative still required several short tunnels and some viaducts. After consideration of several alternate routes the Great Western Railway was extended along the high ridge of the Darling Causeway from . The descent to the Lithgow Valley was originally proposed by means of a tunnel. In 1866 the tunnel was estimated to be about two miles in length and a figure of $800,000 was set down as the cost of its construction. However, due to the enormous cost, construction time and, as John Whitton, Engineer-in-Chief of the NSW Railways reported at the time, it would have been difficult to get a contractor to undertake such difficult work. As a result, John Whitton selected the zig zag method of ascent and descent. On the eastern side of the range, the

Lapstone Zig Zag The Lapstone Zig Zag was a zig zag railway built between and stations on the Main Western line of New South Wales in Australia. Constructed between 1863 and 1865 to overcome an otherwise insurmountable climb up the eastern side of the Blue M ...

, also designed under the supervision of John Whitton, opened near Glenbrook in 1867. The Lapstone Zig Zag ascended Lapstone Hill on a

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gr ...

of 1:30 to 1:33 (~ 3 - 3.3%), which contoured up the side of the range with comparatively light earthworks. By contrast, the Lithgow Zig Zag railway, built between 1866 and 1869, required much heavier engineering, including four large rock cuttings, three fine stone viaducts with semi-circular arches (originally four were planned, but one was built as an embankment instead) and a short tunnel (three tunnels were planned, but two were daylighted during construction due to leaks, becoming two of the four cuttings mentioned above). In the descent of the middle road, the line dropped between the reversing points, being part of the descent from

Clarence Clarence may refer to: Places Australia * Clarence County, New South Wales, a Cadastral division * Clarence, New South Wales, a place near Lithgow * Clarence River (New South Wales) * Clarence Strait (Northern Territory) * City of Clarence, a l ...

. The whole route had a

ruling grade The term ruling grade is usually used as a synonym for "steepest climb" between two points on a railroad. More simply, the steepest grade to be climbed dictates how powerful the motive power (or how light the train) must be in order for the run ...

of 1:42 (~2.38%). John Whitton and his work have been underrated in Australian history, although they provided the operational foundation of the main railway lines in New South Wales. In international references Whitton is recognised as one of approximately twenty of the greatest railway civil engineers in the first century of world railway construction. The achievement of his crossings of the Great Divide was superlative at the time and in terms of British railway civil engineering was only exceeded by the difficult crossing of the Indian Ghats.Department of Planning 1987 The contract to build the Great Zig Zag was awarded to Mr Patrick Higgins in May 1866. It was for the

Wallerawang Wallerawang is a small township in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately northwest of Lithgow, New South Wales, Lithgow adjacent to the Great Western Highway. It is also located on the Main Western ra ...

section of railway which consisted of seven stone viaducts, varying in height from , three tunnels and nearly one and a quarter million cubic yards of excavations, two-thirds through rock.

George Donald

George McGarvie Donald of Lithgow was a master stonemason and builder who helped create the city of Lithgow. Born in

Paddington Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Padd ...

in 1846, he was son of a Scottish stonemason, George Donald, senior. George senior had been encouraged to migrate to New South Wales by

Governor Macquarie Major General Lachlan Macquarie, CB (; gd, Lachann MacGuaire; 31 January 1762 – 1 July 1824) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Scotland. Macquarie served as the fifth Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, an ...

who wished him to assist with government building works. George junior did an apprenticeship as a stonemason under his father and uncle. After this he was engaged on railway construction projects in the district in the late 1860s. He worked on stone railway bridges at the Great Zig Zag and Marrangaroo, and married Marion Miles, daughter of one of the construction foremen. Following completion of the railway he moved to Hill End and worked on a range of construction projects. Among these was Hill End Methodist church, built of basalt rubble from the gold mines. It is now used as an Anglican church. After the failure of the deep lead gold boom of the 1870s George returned to the Lithgow valley and established a construction business with Thomas Crowe. In the early 1880s he constructed St.Mary's Presbyterian church for Thomas Brown, built as a memorial to Brown's wife, Mary. He also built

Cooerwull Academy The Cooerwull Academy was an independent, Presbyterian, day and boarding school for boys, located in Bowenfels, a small town on the western outskirts of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia. Cooerwull was founded in 1882Hartley in the

NSW Legislative Assembly The New South Wales Legislative Assembly is the lower of the two houses of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The upper house is the New South Wales Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament Hous ...

jointly with Joseph Cook from 1891.Christison, 2014, 32-33

Commercial operation and closure

On 19 October 1869 the first official train ran across the Lithgow Zig Zag to

Bowenfels railway station The Bowenfels railway station is a heritage-listed disused railway station and now visitor's centre and restaurant located on the Main Western line in Bowenfels, City of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by John Clifton and ...

, completing the route over the Blue Mountains. This event was heralded worldwide as an engineering marvel resulting in many organised sight-seeing parties from overseas to view it. According to NSW Planning Department documents, in international references, John Whitton is recognised as one of approximately twenty of the greatest railway civil engineers in the first century of world railway construction. The achievement of his crossings of the Great Divide was superlative at the time and in terms of British railway civil engineering was only exceeded by the difficult crossing of the Indian Ghats. Praise for the Lithgow Zig Zag and the line across the mountains is, however, not universal. At least one critic has opined that, while both the Zig Zag and the subsequent

Ten Tunnels Deviation The Ten Tunnels Deviation is a heritage-listed section of the Main Western Line between Newnes Junction and Zig Zag stations in Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed and built by the New South Wales Government Railways and bui ...

were magnificent works of civil engineering, these projects were aiming to solve the wrong problem. The Zig Zag was required to bring the railway down into the Lithgow Valley. There was a trial survey made of an alternative route, which would have continued the line north-west from

, on a gentler gradient along Clarence ridge, before turning to approach

from the north through Lidsdale. Much of this route closely followed an earlier road survey made by Hamiliton Hume and, an assistant surveyor, Lieutenant

George Bowen Sir George Ferguson Bowen (; 2 November 1821 – 21 February 1899), was an Irish author and colonial administrator whose appointments included postings to the Ionian Islands, Queensland, New Zealand, Victoria, Mauritius and Hong Kong.R. B. Joy ...

, in 1827. Had such a route been followed, neither zigzag nor tunnels would have been needed but the line from Sydney would still have crossed the mountains, albeit not via Lithgow. It almost certainly would have cost less to build, and—due to gentler grades—could have carried longer and heavier trains. Even after the Zig Zag had been bypassed, banking engines were often needed to assist heavy freight trains over the mountains from Lithgow. Probably, political considerations and the concentration of coal mines and industry near Lithgow—at the time when the railway routes were decided—made a route via the Lithgow Valley inevitable, but it imposed constraints on rail traffic, some of which persist to the present day. Some freight trains now run via Parkes, Stockinbingal and the

Main South line The Main South Line, sometimes referred to as part of the South Island Main Trunk Railway, is a railway line that runs north and south from Lyttelton in New Zealand through Christchurch and along the east coast of the South Island to Inverca ...

to Sydney, rather than use the line over the mountains. Between 1869 and 1910 the railway was a major force in the development of western New South Wales. Eventually traffic became so dense, due to the growth of the railway system through the spread of settlement, together with the loss of time in working over the Great Zig Zag, that alternatives were considered. From the 1880s many inquiries and investigations were held including consideration of John Whitton's original proposal for a two-mile tunnel. The Lithgow Zig Zag operated between 1869 and 1910. By then it had become an increasingly inefficient bottleneck owing to the growing traffic on the line between Lithgow and Sydney. The Top Points were also too short. Two major accidents occurred in 1901, in January a carriage was backed through the top wing buffer stops and in April a goods engine burst through the buffer stops located at the top "wing" and almost fell into the valley below. To alleviate the congestion, until a new deviation opened, the "top" and "bottom" wings were improved. The "top" wing was abandoned and a new line constructed which involved a sharp curve, heavy rock excavations and earth fillings to a depth of . The "bottom" wing was lengthened without any re-location. However, accidents still continued to occur, as was seen on 8 December 1908 when a Sydney bound goods train stalled just beyond

Clarence Tunnel The Clarence Tunnel is a railway tunnel that was originally part of the Main Western railway line across the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. It is long. History and description The tunnel, located to the west of Clarence, was buil ...

. The train was divided into two but the bottom portion accidentally became a runaway and eventually crashed into the rock cutting of Top Points. There were plans to replace the section of 1 in 42 from Lithgow to Bottom points with a second horseshoe curve-like longer deviation, or with a spiral, but as this section in the open air could be operated with bank engines, this second stage deviation was never carried out. In 1908, work began on the

, a double tracked route with a

of 1:42 as far as the start of the ten tunnels and 1 in 90 through the ten tunnels. The Lithgow Zig Zag was eventually abandoned in 1910, replaced by the Ten-Tunnels Deviation which is still in heavy use as the Main West line to the central-west of NSW and ultimately the trans-Australia line between Sydney and

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...

. On 16 October 1910 the new deviation was opened for traffic and the Great Zig Zag closed.

Use following commercial operation

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the Clarence Tunnel on the Lithgow Zig Zag (along with other tunnels on various lines) were used to store chemical weapons for the

Royal Australian Air Force "Through Adversity to the Stars" , colours = , colours_label = , march = , mascot = , anniversaries = RAAF Anniversary Commemoration ...

. Principally mustard gas and phosgene, the chemical agents were housed in a variety of weapons from bombs to cylinders. The cache was disposed of after the war.

Preservation

In 1972 a cooperative formed to re-use the line using rolling stock sourced from inter-state. In 1975 the line re-opened as a tourist attraction, operating between Top and Bottom Points. The re-development extended to Mt Sinai halt in 1987 and on to Clarence in 1988.

Description

The Great Zig Zag Railway consists of three sections: the "top road", the "middle road" and the "bottom road". Located on the "top road" is number one viaduct. The top points are located where "top road" and "middle road" join. Beyond this two "T" bridges and a stone arch are located at the entrance to the "wing" where the train terminated before proceeding to the "middle road" Located on the "middle road" is number one and number two viaduct and number one tunnel and a cutting which was originally proposed to be number two tunnel. At the end of "middle road" is the bottom "wing". Engineered ledges hewn in the mountainside provide enough room for the railway line. It has an Institute of Engineers (Australia) National Engineering Landmark plaque.

Condition

Physical condition is excellent. Archaeological potential is low.

Modifications and dates

*Construction began in 1863. *Line opened 1869. *Railway line duplicated in 1880. *New "top" and "bottom" wings opened in 1908. *The Great Zig Zag Railway was closed in 1910.Fookes.

Heritage listing

As at 30 September 1997, The Great

had a profound influence upon the development and economy of western New South Wales. At the time it was the greatest civil engineering work in Australia and was considered worldwide as an engineering marvel. It reflects the difficulty experienced in crossing the Blue Mountains and engineering compromises enforced by economics. The reserve is a fine scenic attraction and the sandstone escarpments and viaducts provide a dramatic juxtaposition to the urban development of nearby Lithgow.Department of Planning 1987:2 Lithgow Zig Zag was listed on the

on 2 April 1999 having satisfied the following criteria. The place is important in demonstrating the course, or pattern, of cultural or natural history in New South Wales. It is of historical significance because upon completion it triggered extensive development and had a profound influence on the economy of western New South Wales. It contributed to the economy of western New South Wales to such an extent that it could not handle the volume of traffic and had to be replaced. The place is important in demonstrating aesthetic characteristics and/or a high degree of creative or technical achievement in New South Wales. The reserve is a fine scenic attraction in itself, offering superb views of the rugged sandstone valleys and escarpments leading to the western plains. It serves to provide a dramatic juxtaposition to the urban development of nearby Lithgow suburbs. The three main viaducts are particularly pleasing structures.Lesslie, J.; Klam, M.; Cargill, A. The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group in New South Wales for social, cultural or spiritual reasons. It reflects the difficulty experienced in crossing the Blue Mountains and engineering compromises enforced by economics. The place has potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of the cultural or natural history of New South Wales. At the time of building the Great Zig Zag Railway was regarded as the greatest civil engineering work in Australia at that time and attracted worldwide interest as an engineering marvel.

History

Construction

George Donald

Commercial operation and closure

Use following commercial operation

Preservation

Description

Condition

Modifications and dates

Heritage listing

See also

References

Bibliography

Attribution

Further reading