John's Blue Mountains Blog: October 2024

LITHGOW DISTRICT RAILWAY STATIONS.

2. BELL.

The locality we know as "Bell" was named for Archibald Bell Jr who, in 1833 located the route across the Blue Mountains from Kurrajong which is usually known as "Bell's Line of Road".

The construction of the railway line from Sydney involved the building of the Lithgow Zig Zag, opened in 1869. The entire area was rugged bush land at the time and no stations were provided between Mt Victoria and Clarence, where the descent into the Zig Zag began.

What happened next was intimately bound up with the settlement of Mt Wilson, a fertile plateau 14 km from the site of Bell.

Surveyor William Romaine Govett discovered the plateau in 1838, but it remained wild and inaccessible for another 25 years. In 1862 Mt Wilson was subdivided and put up for sale by the NSW government, but little interest was shown by the public. In 1868 the lots were put up for sale again, this time more successfully. Many lots were purchased by wealthy Sydney families and soon costly homes began to appear in the bush, surrounded by extensive gardens.

The Mt Wilson we see today, over 150 years later, is celebrated for its fine gardens.

The construction of the railway line was the driving force behind this development and no doubt quantities of building materials and tools were soon being dropped off near where Bell's Line of Road meets the railway.

A station was opened at Bell (bearing the name Mt Wilson) in May 1875.

Quotations from the "NSW Railway Guide" for 1881:

"The distance of Mt Wilson from the railway is about 8 miles by Bell's Line of Road." "In 1875 the sixty-two allotments previously measured, and containing in all about 1,025 acres were taken up by 33 purchasers." "EC Merewether, Mr E King Cox, Mr Wynne, The Hon. JB Wilson, Mr Henry Stephen, others, are the owners of land in this picturesque and beautiful locality."

The station was relocated to its present site in 1889 and renamed Bell. It was reconstructed in 1910/11 when the line was duplicated following the Zig Zag diversion in 1910.