Blue Mountains Line

Blue Mountains Line

A NSW TrainLink V set approaches Zig Zag station.
Overview
Service type	Intercity rail
Locale	Blue Mountains and Central West, New South Wales
Current operator(s)	NSW TrainLink
Route
Start	Central
Stops	21
End	Bathurst
Line used	Main Western
Technical
	NSW TrainLink H and V sets and Endeavour railcar
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Track owner(s)	RailCorp
NSW TrainLink intercity services Blue Mountains Central Coast & Newcastle Hunter South Coast Southern Highlands

The Blue Mountains Line is an intercity rail service operated by NSW TrainLink serving the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia. The line travels west from Sydney to the major town of Katoomba and on to Lithgow on the western foothills of the mountains. A limited rail service extends to the regional city of Bathurst, which is supplemented by road coaches connecting Bathurst to Lithgow. The Blue Mountains Line operates over a section of the Main Western line. As such, the tracks are also traversed by the Central West XPT, Outback Xplorer and Indian Pacific passenger services and by freight trains.

The Blue Mountains line is a section of the Main Western line which opened in 1868. The line was built with gradients as steep as 1 in 33 (3%) and curves as sharp as 8 chains (160m). Most of the curves were eased to 12 chains (240m) with duplication.

The line originally ascended the eastern and descended the western sides of the Blue Mountains via a series of zig-zag track sections. The eastern zig zag was by passed by a tunnel in 1892 and the western zig zag (now in use as a tourist railway) was bypassed in 1910 with the Ten Tunnels Deviation.

In the 1950s, the line was electrified primarily as a means of easing the haulage of coal freight from the western coalfields to the coastal ports, but a by-product of this programme was the introduction of electric interurban passenger services as far west as Bowenfels, later cut back to the current terminus of Lithgow. Goods trains are now exclusively diesel hauled. Electric passenger services were originally provided by a combination of electric locomotive hauled carriages and single deck electric multiple unit sets (known as U sets), both of which have now been withdrawn and replaced by more modern rolling stock.