Sandy Hollow – Gulgong railway line
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The Sandy Hollow–Gulgong railway line is a railway line in eastern New South Wales, Australia. The line forms a cross country connection from the Main North line in the Upper Hunter region to the Gwabegar line in the Central West region. The line is approximately 125 kilometres in length. From the Gwabegar line, trains can then ultimately reach the Main West line creating a circuitous bypass of Sydney for freight traffic heading between the west and north of New South Wales. The line was opened in 1985.
A line was built from Muswellbrook to Denman in 1915 and then extended to Sandy Hollow and Merriwa in 1917. The section between Sandy Hollow and Merriwa has been closed since 1988. The Sandy Hollow Line between Sandy Hollow, Gulgong and Maryvale, (between Wellington and Dubbo), was originally surveyed in 1860 as a more easily graded crossing of the Great Dividing Range than the Blue Mountains line nearer to Sydney. It was not commenced, however, until 1937, when it began as an unemployment relief scheme of the NSW Government, achieving infamy for having no modern mechanical devices used on it, other than trucks carrying concrete for the tunnels and bridge piers, all other work being done with picks, shovels, hand drills, horses and carts. Construction continued through World War 2 at a desultory pace, held up by money, labour and especially steel shortages, only to be abandoned unfinished, approximately 92% complete, a few years later in 1951. The line crosses the Great Dividing Range by following the Goulburn River and Bylong Valleys from Sandy Hollow to Bylong, with a tunnel under Cox's Gap.
The tunnel, No.1 of three in the Bylong range and five on the entire line, that was built under Cox's Gap between 1946 and 1949 was used for eastbound road traffic on the Bylong Valley Way until work recommenced in the early 1980s. It was used in 1978 in the filming of the opening scene for the television series Torque, hosted by Peter Wherrett. In that scene, a Bolwell Nagari driven by Wherrett approached as lights in the dark tunnel, then the camera drew back as the car drove out of the tunnel. The tunnel was also used in a scene in the Australian movie The Chain Reaction
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