ROYAL RESTORATION
The largest collection of Royal carriages resides at the National Railway Museum’s sites in York and Shildon. Helen de Saram leads the conservation team at York and her team and volunteers are kept very busy, both with routine work and conservation projects, such as the recent restoration of the dynamometer car. Both the interiors and the exteriors of the royal carriages are of historical value and require regular work to keep them from degrading or disintegrating. One of the biggest threats to the interiors comes from insects, moths in particular. The natural fibres of the upholstery and carpets provide a veritable banquet for these humble insects, so all carriages are subject to an ongoing, scheduled process to protect the interiors. This includes simple tasks such as vacuuming, six-monthly fumigations, and the placing of any paper items deemed to be at risk in a freezer (where the insects meet their doom). Removable items are repaired in the on-site workshop, while larger or fixed items like sofas are worked on in situ and protected from long-term damage by being encased in a fine netting, almost invisible at first glance. The sofas and beds in the Queen Victoria saloon are also strictly not for sitting on and public access to the interior of the carriage is not permitted. For those lucky enough to be allowed to step inside, shoe guards must be worn at all times and flash photography is not permitted, to protect the fragile Victorian fabrics from fading. The interior of the Victoria saloon is a work of art as much as it is a piece of history and so the conservation approach mirrors that attitude. However, conservation is not cheap, as Senior Rail Curator Anthony Coulls notes: “15 years ago or so we sunk £100,000 into [the Victoria Saloon], just
to keep it standing still. Conservation is essentially slowing the decay to an acceptable level”. However, the efforts of the team at the NRM have yielded splendid results. The Victoria Saloon is as impressive now as when it was first photographed, and the team’s dedication to keeping the carriage in original condition led to it being selected as a location for the 2017 film Victoria and Abdul, starring Judi Dench. Was balancing the film crew’s needs with conservation requirements a challenge? “The film crew were very respectful,” says Helen who was on hand non-stop for all 13 hours of filming. “We restricted the number of people allowed in the carriage to six at a time and before they began rolling the cameras, protective coverings were used on the carpets and upholstery. There was Calico and Tyvek everywhere!” Low-energy Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) were used instead of lamps and fans employed to reduce heat. One of the NRM’s own conservationists, Christopher Binks, even appears as a background extra, further enabling the team to closely monitor the carriage throughout filming. The ‘no sitting’ rule was broken during filming, though since Judi Dench is practically royalty in the film industry that is arguably quite acceptable!
EXTERIOR CONSERVATION
Thanks to a private donation, Helen de Saram’s team are currently hard at work on an 18-month project to restore the exterior of the Queen Victoria saloon to its former glory; the first major exterior restoration since the 1960s. Similar to art restoration, layers of yellowed varnish are being removed from the painted royal crest on the carriage, revealing the bright colours underneath,
as shown in one of the images below. The team have been stripping the faded body of the carriage (discovering eight layers of paint as they did so), ready for a repaint into original Carmine and Flake White. A task this vast cannot be accomplished solely by the small team at the NRM, so Helen and her team are assisted from time to time by students on placements and a core team of volunteers, known affectionately as the ‘Daves’. This friendly, jocular bunch have been hard at work on the saloon, while under the public eye, as the restoration of the Victoria Saloon is not being carried out in a workshop, but in the museum’s Station Hall, allowing visitors to see this conservation in action. More than the paintwork requires replacing however as, over time, the friezes that run atop the carriage have become so thickly coated in paint that in places the original detail has been all but lost and the leaves appear as amorphous, indistinguishable blobs. Originally formed of rabbit skin glue, chalk and linseed oil, the sections of frieze that cannot be restored will be replaced using a more modern (rabbit-friendly) epoxy resin mix. The team expect to have to replace approximately a third of the frieze, but once done the new pieces should blend in seamlessly with the old. Modern materials are also being used in place of traditional ones elsewhere, including the paint mixture. The original carmine colour came from a pigment found in the cochineal insect, meaning that in order to paint a carriage in Crimson or Carmine colours, thousands of these creatures would be sacrificed. Fortunately for the cochineal, modern pigments are created synthetically in a lab, so no insects will be harmed in the painting of this vehicle! Other tasks to add the final regal touches include the reapplication of decorative 23¾ carat gold leaf by hand in a painstaking process. An invisible film to filter out ultraviolet light and protect the delicate interior will be placed over the windows and finally, to complete the restoration of this antique vehicle to its original splendour and protect it for future generations, a coating of synthetic UV-resistant varnish will be applied over the exterior. When talking to those responsible for the care of the surviving royal carriages, one thing that is immediately apparent is their passion and enthusiasm for the vehicles. Whether you are a royalist or a republican, these carriages represent a portion of our history and are microcosmic representations of their respective eras; they must be preserved and their stories told. From the enthusiasm of Helen de Saram’s conservation team and the commitment of the ‘Daves’ at the NRM, to the knowledgeable Elizabeth Jones at the SVR’s Engine House, the custodians of these historical vehicles are making sure that the glory of these carriages is preserved for another generation.