Royal Train charter deja vu

YOUR star letter from Dave Richardson in the November issue ends with a suggestion that the Royal Train (RT) being made available for the luxury charter market is most timely. 25 years ago, in November 1997, I was the national passenger marketing manager for Railtrack, a grand title for an interesting job looking after non-franchised open access services, including main line steam. Earlier that year, the Royal Yacht Britannia had been decommissioned and murmurings were being made in upper echelons of Railtrack about the only train it owned, the RT. I was summoned by a very senior Railtrack commercial executive and asked to investigate, in essence, how to monetise the RT to reduce costs or get rid of it. A visit to the RT foreman Chris Hillyard at Wolverton Works was arranged for November 21, 1997. I drove there in my 1955 split screen Morris Minor, coincidentally carrying the same livery as the Royal Train. Mr Hillyard was clearly nervous about a suited and booted Railtrack manager visiting with an RT privatisation agenda to deal with. As we shook hands, I assured him that the RT would not be sold or laid up, so nothing to worry about. He responded by suggesting a Royal Coat of Arms on the side of the Morris as a Royal Train support vehicle! I was given a private tour on every saloon as Mr Hillyard explained how the operation worked and what each saloon was used for and by whom. The upshot of that day was the start of an ongoing friendship and the ongoing use of the RT. The business case I put forward was that the train might be hired out for, say, £50k a day plus operating expenses. But that would be limited to 10 trips a year to preserve the exclusivity, so in reality it would not make much difference in the overall running costs. It was also known that the plan would not be favoured by the ‘official passengers’, and hiring the train out might compromise its royal operations. The full story and an account of that visit is in The Full Works book published in 2013. The idea was dropped and a quarter of a century later the RT is still running and still based at Wolverton, as it has been for 180 years since 1842. How long will it continue to operate and in what form is another question. Phil Marsh Milton Keynes

PHIL MARSH Royal Train stock being shunted at Wolverton on July 1, 25 years after the photographer was tasked with looking into selling it off, but which he was determined not to do.