Trevor Staats wrote:We went up to Sydney just before Christmas ...
Spent a day in Sydney on the trains, ferries and monorail which was also great, if tiring... After Sydney, we headed to Cootamundra for Christmas.... We drove via the Blue Mountains, and spent a night at Katoomba. They have an ex-coal hauling incline railway down the escarpment that you can ride on – at 52 degrees it is pretty steep! They also have a cable car so you can go down one way and walk through the rain forest and up the incline the other way. We had a couple of rides on everything- we were running out of time at the end, so we had 10 minutes to do the 30 minute walk from the cable car back to the incline. We ran! That evening we were looking at the view of the 3 Sisters and watching a huge thunderstorm come in – quite amazing... The area is a bit like the 3 Rondavels area.
The following day we drove to Lithgow and rode on the Zig Zag railway. This is a 3’6†operation running gear mostly from Queensland, they also have a nice South Oz Garratt that doesn’t run yet – this loco is almost identical to the Kenyan 60 class. The ride is spectacular down the western escarpment, with big sandstone arch viaducts and magnificent views. The power was a gritty 4-6-4 tank loco ex-Brisbane suburban work. Video here:
http://www.youtube.co/watch?v=JnPtNSwODVY
After the train ride, we headed south to the Jenolan Caves which were beautiful, but no trains there. From there we drove on to Bathurst and drove around the race track where they have the V8 Supercar Races in October. It is a public scenic drive the rest of the year.
I spotted a load of containers roaring out of the Murray Valley the other night – pic attached.
