A Trip to Australia and New Zealand
Train to Katoomba
The Central Train Station in Sydney is were the city rail system connects to the regional system. The present station building was originally built in 1906, but has been expanded and modernized since. On this trip we took a City Rail train out of Circular Quay and transferred to the Katoomba train at the Central Station. Although a bit confusing to those unfamiliar with the layout of the station it was not hard to get help and we easily found our track and boarded our train without any difficulty.
Although many of the passenger cars show that they are well used they are in very good basic condition. We frequently found ourselves riding the air-conditioned Millennium Train which was very modern and very comfortable. Only once did we get on a car (returning from Katoomba) with some physical problems (a minor leak in the ceiling which caused folks to change seats).
The weather was miserable for tourism, but looking on the bright side it was at least cooler than it had been since we had arrived in Sydney. We had been looking forward to seeing some of the countryside between the city and the mountains. As you can see by looking out of our window, we did not see very much of it. We also had to change to buses for the last part of the trip because a mudslide had caused a track outage. (There was a hurricane in the vicinity and the rain was unusually heavy.)
Katoomba is a very small town well up into the Blue Mountains. The rail station is not as modern as in Sydney, but it has a lot of class none the less - even on a rainy day. Everything is functional. Simple and neat seems to be the concept for all railroads everywhere. All you would have to do is change the name on the bench and this one could have been anywhere in the world during the late nineteenth century. It was not unlike an early station in a smallish town in the American Southwest. Only the electricity and modern rolling stock would be out of place.
