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 Grant-in-Aid that it receives from Parliament each year for air and rail travel. It cost taxpayers £872,000 in 2003, compared with £675,000 in 2002 and was used for a mere nineteen journeys, four more than in the previous year, averaging 827 miles per journey. To mitigate the expense, the royal family has indicated that it had cut the cost of its rail travel by 64 percent in the last five years, reducing the number of coaches from fourteen to nine. Of the five carriages of the royal train that were given up, three were sold for £235,000, while the other two were kept for spare parts. The remaining nine carriages were also offered for rent. But in three years, only the Foreign Office has rented — and only once, in 1998. Lack of conference facilities and dining facilities is cited as the reason, but the train is probably seen as rather too pretentious for modern conferences. In any case, unused for three-quarters of the year and then used only around twenty times, it would require airing out and dusting. Expensive to maintain and underused, it could be replaced by a commercial service, and its critics point out that using a helicopter or renting a single carriage and connecting it to the end of a regular train would be cheaper.
Its future in doubt even before 9/11, a journey by the royal train is now a security official’s nightmare. The miles of tracks are impossible to secure, and the train is old and slow. Industrial action by railway employees (while not directed against Her Majesty) has disrupted royal journeys many times. Vulnerable especially when the royal passengers are asleep, the royal train itself is heavily protected by uniformed members of the royalty and diplomatic protection squad armed with 9-mm Austrian Glock machine pistols. But having just lost her beloved HMY Britannia, Her Majesty is devastated at the thought of surrendering the very last exclusive and familial means of royal transport left.
Ultimately, what might save the royal train is its nemesis: the motor car. As Britain becomes increasingly urbanized and its road system even more congested, traffic jams will multiply. Only a train will allow Her Majesty to get from the middle of one big city to another comfortably, easily, and on time.
Detail of photo from page 92.
“People criticize the expense of the Royal Yacht Britannia,” Lord Mountbatten once remarked. “But when the Queen arrives, no matter where it is, she brings not just a ship but part of the Court of St. James, part of Buckingham Palace with her. She comes in, this beautiful ship with its escort . . . and it is a tremendous and majestic way of arriving.”14 When he heard the media attacking the expenditure on Britannia, Prince Charles said, “It’s not a sort of private yacht. It goes with the position. It is part of the process of representing Britain abroad.” But who had the use of a yacht almost the size of a small ocean liner for a honeymoon?
Private collection
Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert II. After Prince Albert’s death, it was rarely used by Queen Victoria.
The history of royal yachts can be traced to 1660, when the Dutch East India Company presented Charles II with a fifty-foot miniature man-of-war called Mary. After the death of her consort, Queen Victoria had no use for the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert II, an old paddlewheel steamer, and it was only in 1899 that the third of the royal yachts of that name was launched. The government of the day had convinced Her Majesty that, as both the Kaiser and Czar had royal yachts, Britain could not be left behind, and a royal yacht, the larger the better, was an absolute necessity. At its completion in 1901 (delayed after design problems arising from confusion over Imperial and metric measurements), Victoria and Albert III was