The Kingston Flyer is a vintage steam train in the South Island of New Zealand at the southern end of Lake Wakatipu. It used 14 kilometres of preserved track that once formed a part of the Kingston Branch. Originally, Kingston Flyer was a passenger express train between Kingston, Gore, Invercargill, and less frequently, Dunedin. It was operated by the New Zealand Railways (NZR) from the 1890s to 1957. In 1971, NZR revitalised the service as a tourist venture, later leasing the locomotives and rolling stock in 1982 to a private company. Since then, the Kingston Flyer has been through a number of owners, most recently being owned by the Kingston Flyer Ltd. A group of volunteers has restored the railway, rolling stock and locomotives to service. In July 2021 the Kingston Flyer received resource consent to operate, initially for tour groups.
History
The Kingston Flyer was introduced in the late 1890s as New Zealand recovered from the Long Depression of the 1880s. During the Long Depression, slow mixed trains that carried both passengers and freight had served the Kingston Branch and Waimea Plains Railway, daily in some years and only a few times per week in others. However, as the economy was revitalised, the Railways Department sought to increase services on the two lines. The government acquired the Waimea Plains Railway and incorporated it into the national network. The Kingston Branch ran north–south between Invercargill and Kingston, while the Waimea Plains Railway diverged from the branch in Lumsden and ran eastwards, meeting the Main South Line in Gore. Mixed services operated to a higher frequency, and dedicated passenger trains were introduced. These services came to be known as the Kingston Flyer, especially the Gore-Kingston services across the Waimea Plains.
The Flyer served Kingston every weekday. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, it ran Kingston-Gore, where it connected with Main South Line expresses between Dunedin and Invercargill. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, it operated Kingston-Invercargill, using the length of the Kingston Branch. In the early years, services were typically operated by K and V class steam locomotives. At peak periods, especially Christmas and Easter, special services had to be operated to cater for demand, with some operating from Dunedin through to Kingston, where they connected with Lake Wakatipu steamboats to the popular holiday destination of Queenstown. For many years, this was the primary means of travelling to Queenstown.
Demise
In the 1930s, passenger numbers declined sharply and the Railways Department looked to cancel its services on the Kingston Branch. That occurred on 4 October 1937, bringing an end to the regular Flyers. Until 17 September 1945, an abbreviated service continued to operate across the Waimea Plain to the Kingston Branch junction in Lumsden. Then, on both lines, the service was replaced by buses operated by the New Zealand Railways Road Services.
That was not the end of the Flyers. The timetables retained a "runs as required" Kingston Flyer, which typically operated at peak holiday periods between Gore and sometimes Dunedin to Kingston. For many years, those expresses and excursions operated in conjunction with steamers on Lake Wakatipu, to provide the primary access to Queenstown. Patronage was initially heavy, but it declined through the 1950s. 1956 was the last year when Flyers ran each way in the same day, and the final Flyer operated during the 1957 Easter holiday period.
Revitalisation
In 1971, New Zealand Railways announced that it was going to recommence operating a service named the Kingston Flyer as a heritage service. The last use of steam on a regularly scheduled revenue service in New Zealand was on 26 October 1971, and the new Kingston Flyer began operating two months later on 21 December. It utilised the section of the Kingston Branch between Lumsden and Kingston and proved wildly popular. From 1971 until 1979 it operated every summer through to the Easter holiday period and carried over 30,000 people annually. Flooding damage to the line between Lumsden and Garston meant that the last Kingston to Invercargill flyer ran on 17 April 1979 and the damaged section of track in question was formally closed in November of that year. For the next three years, the Kingston Flyer operated from Invercargill to Bluff and Wairio, albeit less successfully.