With soot on the palms of his hands, under his fingernails and dusted across his nose and cheeks, Lee Wiggins is at one with a 54-tonne steam locomotive.
Wearing a black felt train driver’s hat, Wiggins was at the helm of one of the first passenger trips on the grand Zig Zag Railway on Saturday morning, a decade after the NSW Blue Mountains tourist icon was forced to close.
“They’re not like driving a car. You sit down, feel what the engine is telling you, and respond to it,” he said.
“It’s the closest thing to a living piece of machinery.”…