restored, one is at the Birmingham Railway Museum and the other at the Didcot Railway Centre.
At 4:15 p.m. on November 20, 1947, a very special royal train was preparing to pull out of Waterloo and the station masters at Clapham Junction, Surbiton, Woking, and Basingstoke were told to phone as soon as it passed their stations. There were also to be standby locomotives and crews waiting at Woking and Basingstoke. The main part of the train would be two Pullman cars called “Rosemary” and “Rosamund.” At the termination of the train at Winchester, a chalk mark was to be made at the exact spot at which the footplate of the engine (a Lord Nelson class) stopped at the down platform. A signalman with a red flag was to stand on the platform side of the engine at the chalk mark to ensure that the train halted exactly at the appointed place so that the red carpet could be put down. The whole railway — indeed, in the frugality of post-war Britain, the whole country — was participating in this ride. For this was the honeymoon train for Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, RN, ready to take them to Lord Mountbatten’s home, Broadlands, in Hampshire. The young couple arrived at the station directly from their wedding reception at the palace in an open carriage. Concealed beneath the rugs were hot water bottles and the bride’s favourite corgi, Susan, with whom she couldn’t bear to part.
As His Majesty King George VI became ill, he tired more easily, and going to or from an event, he slept more often on board the royal train, his equerry asking that speed be reduced so as not to disturb His Majesty’s sleep. After he died on February 6, 1952, at Sandringham, his remains were conveyed on February 11 from Norfolk for the lying-in-state in London and on February 15 from Paddington Station for the burial at Windsor. The same saloon had been used as a hearse vehicle for the funerals of Queen Alexandra in 1925 and King George V in 1936. The sides were painted black, with the King’s coat of arms mounted centrally on each side, while the roof was finished in white.
On January 1, 1948, all the railways in Britain were nationalized but the royal family’s LMS Royal Trains were unaffected. Two saloons were built for Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. Thus, when she became queen in 1952, Her Majesty inherited three royal trains: the 1941 LNWR armoured train, the 1940 GWR daytime train, and the two saloons. The Queen used her mother’s saloon, 799, while Prince Philip used the former king’s saloon, 798. All three trains were hauled by the Lord Nelson-class locomotives, each of which was decorated with the royal plaques above their smoke boxes.
In 1955, Wolverton Carriage Works built a new saloon for the royal children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne. No. 2900 was fitted out in nursery furniture and nicknamed “the nursery coach” by the railway staff. By the end of the 1970s, the last of the old LNWR coaches that had been built in 1941 had been retired and the royal train was very much a product of British Railways. The present royal train came into operation in 1977 with the introduction of four new saloons to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. The carriages were built in 1972 as prototypes for the standard Inter-City Mark III passenger motor carriage and subsequently fitted out for their royal role at the Wolverton Works, where much of the work on the royal train has been done. The Queen and Prince Philip were both consulted as to design, as seen in the inward-opening, double-door entrance vestibule at the end of her saloon. The windows in the doors opened inward so that Her Majesty could take leave of her hosts after the doors had closed. Other smaller royal trains were still in use for daytime journeys or by Her Majesty’s guests. Visiting royalty or heads of state were met by the royal train whether they entered the country at one of the Channel ports or at Gatwick Airport. Unlike her father and grandfather, Her Majesty has travelled by ordinary trains (first class), and on March 7, 1969, she rode the Underground from Green Park to Oxford Circus, a trip that surely brought back memories of when her governess Crawfie had taken her and her sister on the Underground while the King and Queen were in Canada. Characteristic of his appreciation of history, on September 27, 1975, Prince Philip opened the National Railway Museum at York, where so many of the saloons made for royalty by such companies as the GWR, LMS, and LNWR have been preserved.
But what the world’s television viewers remember most are the great events in the royal family’s (and the nation’s) history in which the royal train is featured. One such event was the funeral of Earl Mountbatten of Burma on September 5, 1979, when a combined royal and funeral train took Her Majesty and the Earl’s body from Waterloo to Romsey. A happier occasion was the honeymoon special on July 29, 1981, when the Prince and Princess of Wales used the train to travel on the same journey from Waterloo to Romsey to spend part of their honeymoon at the Mountbatten estate, Broadlands, as the Queen and Prince Philip had also done. This time, able to follow their every move on television, thousands of well-wishers crowded the route, cheering as the train was led by the locomotive “Broadlands,” which bore at its head the code “C.D.” — the initials of the royal couple.
The royal train enables members of the royal family to travel overnight at times when the weather is too bad to fly, and to work and hold meetings during lengthy journeys. The designation “royal” train is actually incorrect, because the modern train consists of carriages drawn from eight purpose-built saloons, pulled by one of the two Royal Class 47 diesel locomotives, named “Prince William” or “Prince Henry.” The exact number and combination of carriages forming a royal train is determined by factors such as which member of the royal family is travelling and the time and duration of the journey. While it is owned by Railtrack, an American company, it is operated by the English, Welsh and Scottish Railway Company. Journeys on the train are always organized so as not to interfere with scheduled service, and royal train drivers are drawn from an elite pool working in the railway industry. One of the most demanding skills they have to master is the ability to stop at a station within six inches of a given mark, a feat that fascinated Prince Charles when he was a boy.
Fitted out at the former British Rail’s Wolverton Works in Buckinghamshire, the carriages are a distinctive maroon, with red and black coach lining and a grey roof; they include the royal compartments for sleeping and dining, and support cars. On board are modern office and communications facilities. The Queen’s saloon is seventy-five feet long, air-conditioned and electrically heated, and has a bedroom, a bathroom, and a sitting room with an entrance that opens onto the platform, as well as accommodation for her dresser. The Duke of Edinburgh’s saloon has a similar layout, with a kitchen. Scottish landscapes by Roy Penny and Victorian prints of earlier rail journeys hang in both saloons. A link with the earliest days of railways is displayed in the Duke of Edinburgh’s saloon: a piece of Brunei’s original broad-gauge rail, presented on the 150th anniversary of the Great Western Railway.
For the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002, the royal train came into its own, covering 3,500 miles across England, Scotland, and Wales, taking Her Majesty from as far south as Falmouth in Cornwall and as far north as Wick in Caithness, Scotland. The train was to be sold off after the Queen and her family had made use of it during the Golden Jubilee celebrations, but Buckingham Palace told Members of Parliament that there were benefits for the Queen in allowing a new train to replace the old one. Helicopters were often grounded by bad weather or found it difficult to land at night, at dawn, or at dusk. But a train allowed the Queen to go to the very centre of cities, stay on board overnight, and have meetings or entertain people on board. Prince Charles, who used the royal train more frequently than the others, argued (through his staff) that he enjoyed the isolation and convenience it brought to a heavy schedule. It gave him invaluable time to read his briefings and prepare speeches, all the while travelling towards his destination.
The future of the royal train is once more in doubt as the government has launched an inquiry into its cost to the taxpayer, which in 2003 was £596,000 for seventeen journeys, or £35,059 per trip. When Prince Charles took the royal train overnight to Cumbria to launch a rural revival project, the trip cost £16,729. A royal train journey taken by the Prince of Wales from London to Kirkcaldy, Scotland, to visit a farm ecology centre cost £37,158. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s trip from Slough to Lincoln for the annual Maundy Service in April 2002 cost £34,263. Their journey from London to Bodmin to visit the Royal Cornwall Show cost £36,474. The cost of maintaining and using the train is met by the royal household from the
