A history of royal transport, from luxury trains to yachts and planes

Telegraph

2 days ago

It was in the early 1840s that Queen Victoria – a woman not least known for her exacting standards – made history, becoming the first British monarch to travel around the country aboard her very own train.
Since then, members of the Royal family have dashed about the UK aboard several iterations of regal rolling stock – and, for that matter, around the globe on various other royal modes of transport, from the 'King's Flight' to the Royal Yacht Britannia.
But all good things must, it seems, come to an end. Today, the royal train is the last official survivor of the royal transport fleet; and in March 2027, it was recently revealed, it too will be decommissioned, with senior royals instead making greater use of public trains and helicopters.
It is the sad end of a glorious era of royal travel – but one whose significance can only be truly appreciated in the context of its earliest beginnings.
The royal trains
When the first royal train took to the tracks, it changed not only how the Royal family travelled, but its entire public perception, too.
Before the British rail network had expanded sufficiently in the 1840s, the only modes of royal travel were by horse-drawn carriage or ship.
With the very limited spread of public information available in those days, little attention was paid to royal travel, with the focus – if there was any – usually on the destination, where grand decorations and receptions would be the order of the day, rather than the journey.
That all changed when Queen Victoria began traversing the country aboard her own train. From the 1840s onwards, Britain's rail network expanded rapidly, meaning that she was able to conduct more and more of her journeys by rail.
Queen Victoria – the first monarch to recognise the importance of traversing the country and meeting the public – became more visible, and the public became increasingly fascinated.
The lines benefitted too: when travelling between London and Scotland, Queen Victoria's preferred supplier was the London & North Western Railway (LNWR), who then – understandably – used this fact to market themselves as 'The Premier Line'.
From its earliest beginnings, the train was housed at the railway works at Wolverton on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, the world's first 'railway town', built on a grid system to house workers – where the current version still resides today.
In 1869, Queen Victoria commissioned her own set of train cars, day and night saloons lavishly painted with 23-carat-gold and blue silk details. The carriages were again built at Wolverton, at a cost of £1,800 – £800 of which the monarch contributed from her own purse, equivalent to £82,500 today.
These new carriages were the heart of the long royal train, and – in a blatant PR exercise – the LNWR published postcards of them which were widely featured in the press: images of luxurious saloon interiors, otherwise only seen by royalty and staff, which created myth and mystique about its workings.
When King Edward VII came to the throne in 1901, he requested a new royal train with all mod-cons – including cooking facilities, baths and telephones – for himself and Queen Alexandra. He instructed the LNWR that the interior should resemble the royal yacht of the day as closely as possible, and new postcards were duly published.
During the First World War, King George V used the train so frequently that it became his temporary home, while the Second World War saw the very existence of the royal train become a closely guarded state secret. Wolverton-built armour-plating was fitted to the royal saloons, and the train was extensively used to boost public war morale with numerous visits across the rail network.
Gradually, more technological advancements were added, including radio and telephones to create a mobile office; innovations which always eventually trickled down into ordinary public trains.
After the formation of British Railways in 1948, individual regions continued to maintain the constituent railway companies' royal train carriages, until 1977, when Elizabeth II's silver jubilee demanded that a single royal train be constructed.
The late Leo Coleman, a D-Day veteran who started at Wolverton in 1937, was asked to project manage the 1977 royal train construction scheme. In 2013, he told me that Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh and Sir Hugh Casson were heavily involved in the interior design, requesting a functional carriage interior rather than a luxurious one.
It was to be a home from home where 'The Principles' (as the train's royal passengers are known) could, in Leo's words, 'Kick off their shoes, relax in their lounge, have a meal or go to their on-board office and be briefed for their next engagement.'
'The Principles did not want change,' explains Chris Hillyard, the final royal train foreman, who retired in 2013 after a lifetime at Wolverton and on the train. 'They knew how the train worked, [and] trusted the railway staff involved who carried out the train's operation to perfection. This is why it was the preferred method of travel for them.'
The royal yachts
It's tricky to pin down the first British iteration of a royal yacht – though there have, officially, been 83 designated as such since the Restoration in 1660.
Was it Henry VIII's golden-sailed craft, for example; James I's Disdain – the first royal vessel intended purely for pleasure cruising, rather than battle; or those of Charles II, who was gifted the extravagant Mary by the Dutch on his ascension to the throne, establishing the owning of a yacht as a royal tradition?
In its strictly modern sense, British royal yachts have been around for about the last 350 years – sometimes officially naval owned, sometimes privately owned – and have included the likes of HMY Alexandra, named for Edward VII's wife; the stately SS Gothic, used for Elizabeth II's 1954 tour of Australia; and, briefly in 1953, the RY Surprise.
But the most famous is, of course, the 400ft Royal Yacht Britannia, built specifically for the royal household, launched in 1953, and decommissioned in 1997.
Unlike the royal trains, royal yachts are designed not only for travel, but also for hosting state receptions and boosting the UK's presence and influence around the world – a role Britannia played with panache.
During her tenure, she travelled more than one million nautical miles around the world, calling at more than 600 ports in 135 countries – hosting dignitaries, presidents, honeymooning royals and even, during the South Yemeni Crisis of 1986, 1,000 refugees.
The interiors were – famously – grand, designed in the style of an elegant English country house, with floral sofas and antiques, a large state drawing room, a teak-clad sun deck, several sitting rooms and six bedrooms. The late Queen once described the yacht as 'the one place where I can truly relax', and was seen to shed tears during its decommissioning ceremony.
The royal planes
'The King's Flight', as the fleet of aircraft used to transport members of the Royal family was known, was instituted in 1936 when King George VI became the first UK monarch to take to the air, flying from Sandringham to London to attend his Accession Council.
It was the world's first air organisation dedicated to a head of state, and was subsumed into the RAF in 1942, then resurrected after the war and based at RAF Benson near Oxford, with five aircraft.
Unlike rail and sea travel, the King and Queen always flew in different planes, each accompanied by Princess Elizabeth or Margaret, but never both.
When Princess Elizabeth became queen in 1952, the fleet was renamed 'the Queen's Flight', with royal helicopters being added in 1958. The Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles qualified as pilots, often flying themselves to appointments.
The Queen's Flight was disbanded in 1995, and again was subsumed in the RAF, combined with the royal air fleet of BAe 146 aircraft, which was used to fly members of the Royal family and other dignitaries for 39 years, until it was retired in March 2022.
What's next for the royal train?
The expectation at Wolverton was that the train would cease operations once King Charles stopped using it – though that time has arrived a little sooner than anticipated.
Now comprising just seven carriages, the interiors of the current train are surprisingly sparse and practical, with an enduring 1970s aesthetic that feels somewhat corporate and increasingly dated; a far cry from the sumptuous carriages of Victoria's day.
Before its official decommissioning, the train is likely to travel around the network on an emotional farewell tour in 2026 – after which, its fate remains as yet unknown.
Nevertheless, with two of the Royal family's former vehicles now open to the public – the Royal Yacht Britannia in Edinburgh, and one of the BAe 146s at the Duxford Imperial War Museum near Cambridge – it's not unreasonable to hope that the royal train's seven remaining carriages might yet live out its golden years on display in Wolverton.