Scenic route
Blue Mountains Line
Sydney → Lithgow · Australia
Blue Mountains Line in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 156 km
- Fastest time
- 2 h 45 min
- Average speed
- 57 km/h
- Top speed
- 130 km/h
- Operator
- NSW TrainLink
- Train
- Mariyung (D set) double-deck EMU
- Countries
- Australia
- In service since
- 1869
- Runs
- 1× hourly each way (more in peaks)
- Highest point
- 1,067 m
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Climbs from near sea level to 1,017 m at Katoomba through a UNESCO-listed maze of sandstone cliffs and eucalypt canyons.
Sydney’s most spectacular commute climbs nearly a kilometre on ridge-top alignments surveyed in the 1860s. Beyond Springwood the double-deckers thread a chain of cliff-edge towns (Wentworth Falls, Leura, Katoomba), each a trailhead into the Jamison Valley’s sandstone amphitheatres. After Mount Victoria the line slips off the plateau through the 1910 Ten Tunnels Deviation and coasts into coal-country Lithgow. Box-fresh Mariyung sets displaced the beloved 1970s V sets here in 2025.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 8406940 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 37 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 11 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: NSW TrainLink — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Nepean River at Penrith
- Glenbrook Gorge climb
- Wentworth Falls and Leura clifftops
- Katoomba, gateway to the Three Sisters
- Ten Tunnels Deviation
- Lithgow’s coal valley
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More train routes in Australia.