It came as a complete shock to Sheree Davy when she found herself and her grandchildren the centre of attention on Sunday.
Unbeknown to her, club members at the Memorial Park Railway ticket office had been excitedly waiting for the one millionth passenger to turn up.
'It was so unexpected,” says Sheree. 'I had no clue that was going on.”
Sheree, from Papamoa, had her two grandchildren, three-year-old Aliyah Davy and four-year-old Rylan Davy, staying for the weekend, and decided to take them to Memorial Park.
'The kids wanted to go there and play,” explains Sheree. 'We drove around and saw that the trains were running so decided to cruise over there.
'I had a concession ticket for TECT customers that I'd purchased some time ago, so I went to see if I could still use it. There was just this one lady ahead of us buying a ticket, so we thought we may as well get on a train as there wasn't much of a wait.”
She noticed quite a lot of people in the ticketing office but still didn't realise a historical moment was unfolding around her.
'After we got to the window, I looked behind me and there were loads of people. I said sorry because we were holding everyone up, but I was still not aware there was something happening.”
A club member then apologised to the crowd for the delay.
'He then said: ‘and the lucky winner is…' and he pointed me out. It was such a shock.”
The Tauranga Model and Marine Engineering Club has been running rides at the Memorial Park railway for more than 40 years. Leaving from Palmerville Station, trains come and go on Sundays, circling around between the trees, through the tunnels and across the viaduct.
'It was an exciting moment,” says club member and past president Russell Prout about the one millionth ride. 'We've been counting down since the middle of last year. We put a note around club members saying that sometime on Sunday we'd hit the milestone.”
Smiling volunteers wearing bright yellow hi-viz vests and working as conductors, drivers, ticket sellers and safety maintainers turned up for the historical event.
'We've been averaging 25,000 customers per year, but it's been a lot stronger in the last 10 years,” says Russell. 'Pre-Covid it wasn't unusual to have 1000-1100 rides a day. This last Sunday were we up around the 900s.”
The whole ride takes more than six minutes and can take nine minutes depending on who is driving.
Weather permitting, the club usually runs every Sunday from 10am-4pm in summer, and 10am-3pm in winter.