A palace on wheels it ain't! A naff blue bath, cheapo furniture and Philip's OAP railcard by his desk... the Royal Train faces the end of the line
- The current Royal Train dates back to the 1977 Silver Jubilee
- But a 'major decision' is soon due regarding Seventies rolling stock
Even the angriest class warrior would be
hard-pushed to call it luxurious.
With the ambiance of a mid-range provincial
hotel circa 1975, it has a homely simplicity, but it is no palace on wheels.
Formica panels, Fifties-style G-plan
furniture, plastic baths and strip lights (no chandeliers here) would hardly
lend themselves to an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit — unless, perhaps, one was
filming Murder On The Leyton Orient Express.
Royal basics: Prince Charles's sitting room aboard the
Royal Train has all the ambiance of a mid-range provincial hotel circa
1975
Snug: A single bed offers simple unfussy accommodation for
royal travellers
It is also the slowest inter-city rail service
in Britain.
But there is no other train on the planet that
comes close in terms of charm, punctuality and eccentricity — let alone history.
That is why rail buffs and trainspotters will
not be the only ones dismayed by the news the Royal Train could be heading for
the buffers. And none will be sadder than the Queen and her family.
This week, Sir Alan Reid, the Keeper of the
Privy Purse — the financial director of the royal household — appeared before
the MPs on the Public Affairs Select Committee to discuss the state of the royal
finances.
While public finances may have ballooned, the
Monarchy has managed to halve its costs over the past 20 years.
Wash and go: The Queen has a bath in her carriage while
Philip prefers a shower
But its admirable policy of ‘make do and mend’
cannot go on indefinitely. At Buckingham Palace, the 60-year-old boilers are
pushing up the fuel bills, the wiring hasn’t been touched since George VI was on
the throne, bits of masonry are falling off and buckets have to be strategically
placed under holes in the roof.
With all this alarming news to absorb, the MPs
barely noticed Sir Alan’s additional disclosure that the Royal Train is in
similar need of repair.
In a few years, a ‘major decision’ will be
required regarding the Seventies rolling stock. And it will be an expensive one.
‘The figures’, this astute former international financier added, ‘are quite
staggering’.
There is no question that Buckingham Palace
and Windsor Castle must be properly restored. They are two of the most famous
buildings in the world, national landmarks which belong to the nation, not the
Queen.
But there will be less sympathy for the Royal
Train. And Sir Alan’s reference to the ‘staggering’ cost of a new one suggests
that he already knows it’s a non-starter.
In which case, the Royal Train seems destined
to follow the dear old royal yacht, Britannia, in to retirement. And while that
may please modernisers and republicans, royalists like me will regard it as a
crying shame.
The vast majority of royal rail journeys
involve scheduled services. But the Royal Train has its uses.
Critics always focus on the headline figure of
the train — £1 million a year to run, or £20,000, say, for a trip to Scotland —
without acknowledging the advantages of a royal mobile home.
It’s extremely secure, it can accommodate all
the paraphernalia of a royal tour and, unlike the alternatives, it is virtually
foolproof.
If a whole county is waiting to see the Queen,
then a whole county will be let down if her helicopter is grounded by fog or her
car gets stuck in traffic.
Thanks to the Royal Train, everyone knows that
she will be in Swansea or Lincoln or Ayr to the nearest ten seconds (though
Royal Train drivers try to stick to a five-second margin of error).
As for the Royal Family themselves, it really
is the proverbial home-from-home — familiar staff, a favourite armchair, the
same old tea cups.
With its distinctive royal claret coaches, the train
attracts an enormous amount of attention wherever it goes
An abiding memory of my only tour inside —
during the 2002 Golden Jubilee — are the boxes of Tesco tissues on the royal
tables.
When not in use, it all sits in a large
railway shed at Wolverton, near Milton Keynes, where a skeleton crew keep the
nine claret-coloured carriages and their contents in mint condition.
Not that they are called carriages. They are
‘saloons’.
The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the
Prince of Wales each have their own saloon while additional wagons, looking much
like regular sleepers and First Class carriages, feed and accommodate the staff.
There is no permanent royal locomotive,
although the operator, DB Schenker, will only hitch one of its classier models
to the royal rolling stock.
And since 2007, the Royal Train is powered by
eco-friendly bio-fuel.
Royal passengers sleep in single beds which
run lengthways behind a partition in the centre of the carriage (for optimum
stability and a good night’s sleep). All the other bunks lie across the
carriage, as in a conventional sleeper.
The Queen has a bath in her carriage while the
Duke of Edinburgh prefers a shower — and keeps a blown-up image of his first
Senior Citizen’s Railcard alongside a chunk of Brunel’s original broad
gauge.
The Queen's bedroom on an earlier, and perhaps slightly
more luxurious, incarnation the Royal Train taken in 1946. The current train has
been in service since 1977
Charles keeps a handmade pot-pourri holder,
presented long ago by a girl in Haverfordwest, next to his bed and a picture of
Britannia above it. As well he might.
The similarities with Britannia are everywhere
— from the plain furniture and antiquated telephones to the absence of double
beds (if the Duchess of Cornwall is on board, she has her own saloon — complete
with pink bathroom).
As Brian Hoey points out in his fascinating
book, The Royal Train, when Edward VII became King, he stipulated it should ‘be
as much like the royal yacht as possible’.
The current Royal Train dates back to the 1977
Silver Jubilee. Then, it consisted of 14 carriages for the use of all the senior
members of the family. Sometimes two trains would be in action. On one day in
1986, no less than three could be seen in different parts of the
country.
By the late Nineties, cost-cutting had reduced
the number of wagons to nine and royal use was restricted to the Queen, the Duke
of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales.
None of them has ever been as demanding as the
earliest royal passengers. Queen Victoria was the first monarch to board a train
when she made the journey from Slough to Paddington in 1842. Brunel himself was
on the footplate.
To general relief, Her Majesty much enjoyed
the experience and was soon making her mark on Britain’s rail network.
All change: The Queen and her corgis disembark in
1968
Having decreed she would neither eat nor go to
the lavatory on board, lavish ‘refreshment’ buildings were built along the route
north to Scotland. Victoria commissioned the wagons which became the first Royal
Train.
While Prince Albert invented the first train
lavatory, George V went one better and was the first person in the world to
install a bath on a train.
It was 1915, the nation was at war and he
wanted to tour Britain without descending on the nearest country house each
night and causing mayhem.
In time, Queen Mary became a convert to the
55in bath, though she imposed a speed limit of 5mph when sitting in
it.
A full-size bath was installed in 1941 as
George VI and Queen Elizabeth began extended wartime tours of the country by
rail.
By the end of the war, it was calculated they
had travelled 63,000 miles. But distance is only half of the story.
Now, as then, royal passengers spend a lot of
their time at a standstill. In order to avoid any inconvenience to regular rail
services, the train will meander along branch lines and wait until the main
services have ceased before taking to the major routes.
When it is reasonably near its destination for
the following morning, it then parks in a secure siding until dawn.
The driver — drawn from a pool of 50 — will
then begin a stately progress to the final destination.
Drivers pride themselves on a jolt-free ride,
just as the on-board chef takes great delight in preparing the scrambled eggs
and bacon exactly the way the Queen likes them.
Most of us will never even see inside this
thing, let alone travel in it. But, as with Britannia, that does not stop us
taking great pride in a classic piece of romantic, understated British
elegance.
But for how much longer? It will certainly be
a sad day when there is no longer a claret-coloured saloon carrying the head of
state across the nation which invented the train in the first place.
