Railway Carriages by Tim Bryan

Author:Tim Bryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784423193
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

An early colour lithograph printed by Dean & Co. of London, featuring a section which, when folded back, revealed the interior of the royal carriage and its occupants Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, their children and attendants.

Only two days’ notice was provided in advance of the journey on 13 June 1842; the train that was hurriedly assembled included the royal saloon, two posting carriages for the rest of the retinue and trucks to carry the horse-drawn carriages. After inspecting the train, the royal party set off for Paddington, arriving there twenty-five minutes later; Victoria wrote that she was ‘quite charmed’ by the experience and noted that it was free of the dust and noise of road travel. Questions were asked in the press and in Parliament regarding what was seen as a great risk to the royal personage, but in typical fashion, the Queen was not to be told what to do by any newspaper or MP and returned to Slough ten days later by train, this time taking her son Albert Edward (later Edward VII) with her.

Other railways began building royal saloons, most notably the London & Birmingham, which, along with the Grand Junction was the main route to the North, and the LSWR, which was the most obvious line for visits to Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. The first royal journey on the London & Birmingham took place on 28 November 1843 when the Queen travelled from Watford to Tamworth; the company had already provided the special bed-carriage for Queen Adelaide described earlier, and the ‘handsome and luxurious’ saloon it provided for Victoria was comparable to the one built by the GWR, although it was notable for being heated, the first railway carriage in Britain to have this feature.

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