How to get to the Blue Mountains by car or public transport. The Blue Mountains offers a wealth of hiking trails and sights to explore and is one of Sydney’s most popular day trips and weekend excursions. The Blue Mountains covers a large area and you can spend a long time coming back before you’d complete all the trails and sights. For the first time visitors, the big attractions not to be missed are the Wentworth Falls, Leura (the township and its numerous lookouts), the Three Sisters and Scenic World at Katoomba, and Govetts Leap at Blackheath.
Sydney to the Blue Mountains by Car
Sydney to the Blue Mountains by Train
There are regular train services leaving Sydney heading to the Blue Mountains. The BMT (Blue Mountain Train) departs from Central Station and the best station to disembark is Katoomba being the location of the Three Sisters and Scenic World.
The journey time from Sydney to Blue Mountains is around 2 hours with tickets starting from $6.20. Trains depart from Central as early as 4.22 AM arriving in Katoomba at 6.22 AM with services running hourly and increasing in frequency in the afternoon. You can download a full timetable for the Blue Mountain Train here and plan your journey here.
From Katoomba, you can take the Hop On Hop Off bus service provided by the Blue Mountains Explorer Bus which gets you around all the key attractions with relative ease.
Blue Mountains Explorer Bus Map
Public Buses
There are also public buses servicing the area with bus 686 departing from near the train station to Scenic World and bus 685 going from Katoomba to North Wentworth Falls as two useful examples. For journey planning you can use Transport NSW Journey Planner. Below is a guide to the routes
Bike Hire at Katoomba
If you are arriving by train another option for local transport is to hire a bike. Located in Katoomba, Blue Mountains Bike Hire offers modern electric bikes and mountain bikes.