Coming down the mountain – Zig Zag Railway

The Great Zig Zag carried the Great Western Railway down the western flank of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney over three sandstone viaducts and through two tunnels. It was opened in 1869 and operated until 1910 when it was replaced by a ten-tunnel deviation. It reopened in 1975 as a narrow-gauge tourist railway.

This image shows the three elegant viaducts, extensive earthworks and the rugged sandstone escarpment which made the Zig Zag Railway an engineering marvel of its day.

This glass plate negative is one of 2900 Kerry & Co. photographs in the Powerhouse Museum’s ‘Tyrrell Collection’ once owned by Sydney bookseller, James Tyrrell.

Reference: On the move: a history of transport in Australia by Margaret Simpson, Powerhouse Publishing, 2004.

Post by Lynne McNairn

Photography by Kerry & Co.
No known copyright restrictions

Tags: Blue Mountains, engineering, Rail history, railways, trains, Zig Zag Railway

The Powerhouse Museum's Photo of the Day blog features a new image each day, chosen from the Powerhouse Photo Library.

The majority of these images have been taken by Museum photographers for a variety of purposes such as for exhibitions, of objects in our collection, events, behind-the-scenes and location shots. We also feature many images taken by our Flickr community and from our visitors. We hope you enjoy the photographs and stories.

The licensing of each image varies however we are trying to release as many as possible under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 license.