For 75-year-old Mick Marriott-Statham, the longest-serving volunteer at the Lithgow Zig Zag Railway, a love of trains runs in the family.
“I’ve always been interested in trains and railways,” he said. “My grandfather was a railway man, and my dad was a railway man for a while, too.”
Marriott-Statham, who joined the Zig-Zag Co-op in 1973 as a 23-year-old apprentice, remembers its first tourist ride in 1975.
“October of ’75 was our first passenger service, which was between Bottom Points and Top Points, which was just one mile, or 1.6 kilometres,” he said.
The history of the heritage steam-powered locomotive’s operation has had as many twists and turns as its route from Clarence station in the Blue Mountains. There have been expanded services, a decade-long shutdown after a safety inspection failure, then major rebuilds after bushfires in 2013, and again in 2019-20.
After reopening in May 2023, it has run services daily.
Now, the closure of a stretch of the Great Western Highway at Victoria Pass in March, after engineers discovered cracking and ground movement in a causeway built by convicts nearly 200 years ago, comes at a difficult time for the railway.
Tourists wishing to visit the historic attraction must now make a significant detour to get there.
Traffic on these detour routes has already caused severe congestion, blowing out travel time between Sydney and Lithgow by up to an hour.
Lithgow has been battered by eight natural disasters in the past decade, leaving unresolved damage on most of the major roads used by residents.
Because of the highway closure, these roads have plunged into further disrepair as thousands of additional motorists travel on them every day.
Lithgow Mayor Cassandra Coleman says cracks are forming in the community.
“We’re a township of 22,000 people. The locals are resilient and resourceful, but I can see their stress … They’re saying to me, you know, Cass, look at our roads. They’re tearing up our roads, and they weren’t in the best state to begin with.”
Since early 2026, Lithgow City Council has been waiting on $7.2 million in disaster recovery funding from the NSW government. Coleman says Lithgow cannot afford the scale of road repairs required without state funding.
Transport for NSW said the highway closure would last at least three months, but has not said when the road will reopen.
Marriott-Statham said tourist traffic at the Zig Zag has not slowed yet, so for now, it’s still full steam ahead for the veteran volunteer, who has no plans to retire.
“It’s really remained the same. Of course, I don’t know what’s going to happen next year, or the year after … I still enjoy driving, and really the smiles on people’s faces. You know, especially for the young people, some of them have never seen a steam train before … I’ll keep doing it for as long as I can.”
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Emily Kaine is a national news blogger at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.