The Kingston Flyer is a vintage steam train in the South Island of New Zealand at the southern end of Lake Wakatipu.

In 1971, NZR revitalised the service as a tourist venture, later leasing the locomotives and rolling stock in 1982 to a private company.

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.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, it ran Kingston-Gore, where it connected with Main South Line expresses between Dunedin and Invercargill.

In the 1930s, passenger numbers declined sharply and the Railways Department looked to cancel its services on the Kingston Branch.

Until 17 September 1945, an abbreviated service continued to operate across the Waimea Plain to the Kingston Branch junction in Lumsden.

For many years, those expresses and excursions operated in conjunction with steamers on Lake Wakatipu, to provide the primary access to Queenstown.

[4] 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.

Kingston Acquisitions tried to sell the train in November 2008 to repay about $4.7 million to Christchurch-based finance company Prudential.

Prudential blocked an initial offer by United States-based company Railmark to buy the operation for $2.25m, the insurers refusing to accept anything less than the whole debt being cleared.

[9][10] In December 2012 the Kingston Flyer was again suspended, due to the discovery of leaks in AB 778's boiler and owner David Bryce's ongoing health problems.

The train resumed operation once the extensive overhaul of AB 795 was finished, and the business was once again put up for sale.

[11] As at December 2013 no offers had been accepted and the operation remained mothballed, the owner suggested that the Kingston Flyer could be put into a trust.

[15] On 22 December 2017, it was announced that the train would remain in Kingston, and it was hoped that one AB class locomotive would be operational by February 2018.

[16] In January 2018, the Mountain Scene newspaper announced that the land of the Kingston Flyer operation would be sold off for property development, but in early February 2018, it was reported that the new owners had "big plans" for the train.

Director of the Kingston Flyer Limited, Neville Simpson, stated that the train may run for the public on Sundays "as the engine's still warm.