Trains finally conquered the mountains in 1867 with a line all the way to Weatherboard (Wentworth Falls). The first route over the mountains involved a small zig zag and then a tunnel that often nearly choked crewman and passengers alike with the thick coal smoke from the multiple engines required to get a train up the steep grades. This small Zig Zag, which is an interesting walk today, was only short-lived as a new route had to be investigated to speed train times up, and to reduce the bottleneck that developed at the top and bottom points of the Lapstone Zig Zag.
The original tunnel and cutting is still also an easy walk and starts just off the highway, take the Lapstone turnoff and park infront of the water tank not long after you leave the highway. Most of the walk is quite easy, it is quite difficult to actually get to the mouth of the tunnel, though you can easily see it from above. At one point this tunnel was used to store 500lb bombs and mustard gas during WW2.
The tunnel used to be a mushroom farm and is now being cleaned up to be a walkway. The old cutting on the western side of the tunnel is also walkable, not many people even know it exists. This old cutting comes out near the nursery on the highway, the remains of the old water tank foundations can be seen here as well. A new route was surveyed and is still in use today which involved massive amounts of rock excavation to create a long cutting and a rail bed along the wall of Glenbrook Gorge.
Back when this work was done, nobody gave two hoots about conservation and the rock and spoil was just blasted and dumped into the bottom of Glenbrook Gorge. Over the years since, this rock and spoil has actually been largely washed out of the gorge to form the large island at the mouth of the Gorge. Part of this construction involved the construction of a brand new tunnel that extends under the Bluff hill at Glenbrook, during the contruction of this tunnel and rail line, a large tent city sprang up on this hill (The Bluff) where a couple of thousand workers and families lived until the line was opened and just as quick as it sprung up, this tent city disappeared. Basically nothing remains to show this tent city even existed, at least not that I have been able to find.
On the eastern side of the tunnel, the first of the funicular railways was constructed to aid in bringing bricks and other materials close to the mouth of the tunnel. To the best of my knowledge, there was only one other funicular railway used in the construction of the western railway line, and that is now long lost to the bush and is on the Bells Line close to the Lithgow Zigzag.
The famous Scenic Railway at Katoomba is a classic example of a funicular railway. With the exception of those 3 funicular railways, I know of 2 other such funicular railways that were on the Blue Mountains, one I used to have a cache at, but is now private property, the other is on State Rail property and I have not viewed with my own eyes but from photos I have seen, still has wooden structures in place. Both of these were for the purpose of mining.
So back to our Glenbrook funicular railway, to feed this tunnel construction, a tramway through Darks Common was constructed, again, you can walk along this interesting piece of history to get to this location. Close to where this cache is are the foundations of the original winding house where the engine and winding equipment were housed that powered the funicular railway.
Not much is left now, some concrete foundations and rusting embedded threaded rod that the winding engine was mounted to. The walk to the cache can be done via 2 easy methods, along the old tram rail bed past a couple of other caches and the otherway is via a number of steps and our Triview I cache. When the new route was completed, it was still only a single track route, the old route (Minus the zig zag of course) was still in use at the same time until the dual track was finally laid.
The cache is an easy find but please make sure it is hidden well so it does not suffer the same fate as the original Forgotten Railway #1 cache.
I hope you enjoyed learning a "Little" bit about the old railway system that was built on the lower Blue Mountains, there is a lot og history just waiting to be discovered here.