The Knapsack Bridge at Lapstone/Glenbrook of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, has a series of reasonably interesting remnants consisting of a memorial, ruins of a gate keepers cottage, a disused train platform and of course the grand bridge itself; the Knapsack Gully Bridge.
Both Aboriginal and Colonial History is strong in this area.
There were twelve level-crossings staffed by gatekeepers who lived in an adjacent cottage on the western railway line between the Nepean River and Mount Victoria. The first of these cottages, built in 1867, lay just over the Nepean, where the railway crossed the road about to climb Mitchell’s Pass. The level crossing was replaced by an overbridge in 1913 when the track was duplicated to cross the new Knapsack Gully Viaduct (G 025), but the Railway Commissioners neither destroyed nor sold the cottage, which was leased as a residence called Green Gables. It was ultimately sold by the railway authorities in 1945 but in 1968 it was severely damaged in a bushfire and lost its roof.
In 1975 the Blue Mountains City Council acquired the ruin and the so-called marshalling yard area adjacent between the railway and the then Great Western Highway which used the 1865 Knapsack Gully Viaduct. The intention to restore the cottage as a tearoom and tourist information bureau was not fulfilled and became inappropriate once Knapsack Gully Viaduct was by-passed by the extension of the M4 motorway in 1992. The cottage remains a ruin surrounded by a wire fence.
Source: New South Wales Heritage Register.
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