Queen Elizabeth II farewells Timaru from the observation platform of her royal car en route to Dunedin on 25 January 1954. Much of this tour by the Queen and Prince Philip was by road rather than rail, and, for the first time, aeroplane. On later tours trains were used even less, and the Queen travelled by car or air or on the royal yacht Britannia. New Zealand’s first royal train appeared for the tour of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall (later George V and Queen Mary) in 1901. In the 1920s, when Edward, Prince of Wales, and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester (the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth) visited, trains brought groups on cheap day-tickets to each royal stopover.