Royal Train 1970-1985

[Wheatley]

Doh ! Fat fingers and dodgy glasses. Thank you !

[The Pilotman]

15 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

 

Found a picture but can't see coach numbers.

 

 

 

I wonder if Her Majesty sampled a bacon roll and a leaf tea whilst on board.

[keefer]

If they'd used a TRSB, she could've had a burger and a pint of draught bitter!

[TRAILRAGE]

MK1 Restaurant First can be seen in this formation in 1982.

 

 

Cheers Trailrage

 

[johnw1]

Royal Train approaching Nottingham during HRH Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee tour of the East Midlands

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pics-by-john/5548650612/

 

 

[DavidB-AU]

A very different Royal Train in 1981 taking Charles and Diana on their honeymoon. 73142, FK 13401, BCK 21268 and TDB 975025.

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

10 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

A very different Royal Train in 1981 taking Charles and Diana on their honeymoon. 73142, FK 13401, BCK 21268 and TDB 975025.

 

 

Although technically of course it is a Special Train, not a Royal Train.  A train is only a Royal Train when it is conveying the monarch

[DavidB-AU]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Although technically of course it is a Special Train, not a Royal Train.  A train is only a Royal Train when it is conveying the monarch

 

The Royal Train is the Royal Train. Don't know if the codewords are still used but the word and the conditions required changed depending on who it was carrying. The Sovereign Grants Act says who may use it. These days the Prince of Wales uses it more than the Queen.

 

On the subject of the short HST, it wouldn't necessarily have run at even 90mph. It's not unusual for the Royal Train to run at only 60mph. It also has to arrive exactly at its booked time and might run as slow as 5mph just out of sight of the station to ensure it arrives exactly on time.

 

Cheers

David

Edited September 9, 2020 by DavidB-AU

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, DavidB-AU said:

 

The Royal Train is the Royal Train. Don't know if the codewords are still used but the word and the conditions required changed depending on who it was carrying. The Sovereign Grants Act says who may use it. These days the Prince of Wales uses it more than the Queen.

 

On the subject of the short HST, it wouldn't necessarily have run at even 90mph. It's not unusual for the Royal Train to run at only 60mph. It also has to arrive exactly at its booked time and might run as slow as 5mph just out of sight of the station to ensure it arrives exactly on time.

 

Cheers

David

The code words ceased to be used a very long time ago - I think I've got the date reference somewhere but it really was a long while back and I know we weren't using them when I first got invloved with this sort of stuff back in 1971.  But I can assure you - probably having had a lot more to do with it over the years than most other contributors to RM web - that it is, and has long been, only a Royal Train when conveying the monarch.  when conveying any other member of teh Ryal Family it is a Special Train albeit one using rolling stock from the Royal Train fleet.

 

From direct experience of planning the journeys  the situation definitely used to be that the Prince of Wales probably used the train a bit more frequently than the Queen but the use of the train by any member of the family depended very much on the particular tour programme that was involved and on the timings of various events (which were basically outside the control of the railway - we had to fit with them and not the other way about.  In fact in quite a lot of cases by the 1980s the train was only used on the initial outward direction of a visit and returned ECS after delivering the Principal Party.  As far as speeds are concerned there was no hard and fast rule apart from avoiding very

fast running at night and not going too fast when the Principal Party was aboard.   However having been presented to HM and the Duke of Edinburgh in his saloon on a journey which I had planned I can assure you that we were running at 90mph at the time (on the Badminton cut-off) in order to make up a minute or two.

 

And yes all approaches to stopping points are generally taken slowly but 5 mph would definitely be ridiculously low except when actually running into the platform.  It was incidentally well known among Royal Train staff that at one time that HM and the HRH I have just mentioned used to have bets with each other about the distance by which they might miss the red carpet (back in the days when one was used) but various BR local managers had the answer to that one,  I definitely had the train stop in the wrong place - by about 15 feet - at one of my stations when I was officially meeting the Duke off it despite the fact that we had measured the position of the stopping mark several times over.  That led to quite a debate between me and the Guards Inspector on the train about who was wrong but when the train returned later in the afternoon to collect HRH we carried out a check measurement and found that the train was wrong, and not our tape.  It was alas all to easy a mistake to make if vehicles were changed over for whatever reason during the planning process and somebody forgot to recalculate the measurements especially if there was more than one job running at the same time and vehicles were swopped between them to meet changes official requirements (although that, in my experience never happened with the Queen or Duke of Edinburgh.

[TRAILRAGE]

Not seen this one before

 

[uax6]

My  only dealings with the RT were signalling it back in 2012. I'm not quite sure what was going on in it, it was timed for 75mph over our single line, but the time it took equated to it actually doing something around 50mph, which of course then delayed the normal service trains.... Frankly I was not impressed, as that year it came through twice and did the same thing each time...

 

Mind you I did have the opportunity of speaking to the Conductor, who was cross that they were being held at a signal for booked path, my reply of asking if he really wanted the principle killed in a head on probably didn't go down well.....

 

Andy G

[DavidB-AU]

8 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

But I can assure you - probably having had a lot more to do with it over the years than most other contributors to RM web - that it is, and has long been, only a Royal Train when conveying the monarch.  when conveying any other member of teh Ryal Family it is a Special Train albeit one using rolling stock from the Royal Train fleet.

 

The thing about public records is they become public eventually. There are plenty of Royal Train Notices in the National Archives relating to travel by members of the Royal Family other than the monarch. And when the Court Circular says "His Royal Highness this morning travelled on the Royal Train" I'm pretty sure Clarence House know what they are talking about.

 

Cheers

David

[jwealleans]

There's no date on the photo above, but are those vehicles being taken for preservation?  The BG is in ECJS teak at Shildon now.

[DavidB-AU]

1 hour ago, jwealleans said:

There's no date on the photo above, but are those vehicles being taken for preservation?  The BG is in ECJS teak at Shildon now.

 

The caption says 27/02/1977 and being delivered to NRM.

 

 

[Wheatley]

22 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

It was incidentally well known among Royal Train staff that at one time that HM and the HRH I have just mentioned used to have bets with each other about the distance by which they might miss the red carpet (back in the days when one was used) but various BR local managers had the answer to that one,  I definitely had the train stop in the wrong place - by about 15 feet - at one of my stations when I was officially meeting the Duke off it despite the fact that we had measured the position of the stopping mark several times over.  That led to quite a debate between me and the Guards Inspector on the train about who was wrong but when the train returned later in the afternoon to collect HRH we carried out a check measurement and found that the train was wrong, and not our tape.  

 

My first encounter with it was at Barnsley in (I think) 1991, when the Useless Management Trainee I meantioned in the Stonehaven thread was in charge of part of the arrival arrangements. It was around the time that the last BR corporate uniform came out (the really nice one with the stripey shirts) and we (booking office staff) were given ours a couple of days beforehand as even Area Manager Sheffield (Socialist Republic of) must have realised that leaving us in the raggy a***ed collection of heavy metal T-shirts, blagged bits of railman's uniform and the moth eaten Red Star jumper we usually wore was probably not a geat idea.

 

All the UMT (by now the Useless Area Cleaning Manager) had to do was read the measurements off the bit of paper she had been given, mark that distance on the platform to show the position of the centre of the red carpet, and provide 4 men from her strafbattaillon of station cleaning miscreants to carry the royal baggage from the train to one of the fleet of cars meeting HM and HRH to take them on to their engagement.

 

So there we both were, looking very smart in our single breasted jackets, watching the comings and goings and trying to keep the station cat in our office and away from the police dogs, when the Ops Supervisor, Sam, dashed up to the window.

 

"Stu how long is a mark 3 ?

"75 feet"

"And a 47 ?"

"Dunno, 60ish ?"

"Thought so. F***. Gimmee your jacket..."

 

The carpet was exactly on the UMT's mark, exactly the right distance from exactly the wrong end of the platform. The train was a couple of minutes away, and Sam, who had been intending to keep well out of sight, was in shirt sleeves having left his jacket in his van, too far away to fetch in time. He took mine, squeezed into it, dashed back over to the arrival platform, strode out however many Mk3s plus 47 plus a bit for the door it should have been (in front of all the assembled great and good), and stood on the platform edge signalling the driver to ignore his painted mark and draw forward until door and carpet lined up. He got a meal out for him and Mrs Sam on the AM for that, but the UMT wasn't finished yet.

 

The station cleaning gang were even scruffier than us usually, but the UMT had acquired new uniforms for them too. Well, new disposable paper suits at any rate. They sidled up looking for all the world like they were there to decontaminate the royal party rather than carry their bags. She didn't get a meal out on the AM.

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

 

The thing about public records is they become public eventually. There are plenty of Royal Train Notices in the National Archives relating to travel by members of the Royal Family other than the monarch. And when the Court Circular says "His Royal Highness this morning travelled on the Royal Train" I'm pretty sure Clarence House know what they are talking about.

 

Cheers

David

And so do I - after all I did the flippin' job - and had to say on the notice what sort of train it was and make sure it had the correct headcode (because the one for a Royal Train was different from the one for a Special Train).  And I'm not sure about Clarence House as they didn't receive the notices (none of the Royal households received copies of the notices unless it was a practice which ceased a very long time back).  However I can tell you that in 1985 when somebody wanted to paint a picture of the Royal Train on a visit to Wales in the early 1950s he had contacted the Royal Archives to try to establish detailed information about the train and they had no information at all about the train apart from arrival & departure times at various destinations on the tour.  He then tried BR starting at the BRB and eventually finished up being put in touch with me because it had been a train on what had then been the WR - I gave him the formation and even the engine numbers  - all of which was shown on the notice which were all shown in the original notice.

 

We didn't receive Court Circulars and in any case we worked in accordance with BR instructions and they very clearly differentiated between a Royal Train, i.e. one conveying the Monarch and a Special Train, i.e.one conveying any member of the Royal Family other than the Monarch.  Simples - and of course they had to be different because down the years there were quite a number of restrictions and additional Instructions which applied to Royal Trains (but not to those running as Special Trains) although some of these were gradually relaxed over the years.  Incidentally by the early 1980s the notices were only issued on a need to know basis and they never covered the entire journey of a loaded train the idea being that nobody would know where it was going unless they happened to be responsible for the destination (and they wouldn't know where it had come from ).

[Gwiwer]

1X01 and 1Z01 iirc. 5___ for the e.c.s. and light engine moves. It’s not the same today. If one goes looking on the open-data websites any Royal Train stock movements will not be found. 

[Wheatley]

And if someone sends you a light engine late one night and no-one in the boxes behind you has bothered to find out what the real head code is, don't describe it on to Leeds Powerbox as 0X01 just for the laugh. It doesn't end well. 

[keefer]

Just out of interest, to what (or whom) did the old codewords refer?

i.e. GROVE, DEEPDENE and DEEPLUS.

And did this kind-of carry forward to the 4-character headcodes? ISTR you could have 1X01/2/3 for different Persons on board and possibly 1X00 for 'empty but en-route to meet' said Person(s).

I've read one of the old Special Notices and the tasks required of the railway were pretty comprehensive in their requirements: clear signals, level crossings clear for the train, Police presence at bridges etc. Did the requirements change much from the older days of British Railways (1950/60s)?

Edited September 10, 2020 by keefer

[DavidB-AU]

6 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

We didn't receive Court Circulars and in any case we worked in accordance with BR instructions and they very clearly differentiated between a Royal Train, i.e. one conveying the Monarch and a Special Train, i.e.one conveying any member of the Royal Family other than the Monarch. 

 

There are plenty of publicly available primary sources which say otherwise. The Parliament, National Archives, ORR, Network Rail and the Royal Family itself. The current franchise agreement defines a Royal Train as "railway services for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II or any successor head of state or members of the family or representatives of them".

 

Cheers

David

[The Stationmaster]

11 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

 

There are plenty of publicly available primary sources which say otherwise. The Parliament, National Archives, ORR, Network Rail and the Royal Family itself. The current franchise agreement defines a Royal Train as "railway services for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II or any successor head of state or members of the family or representatives of them".

 

Cheers

David

And this thread is entitled 'Royal Train 1970 - 1985'. - quite a while before any naive, and railway terminology ignorant, Civil Servant wrote any sort  franchise terminology or drafted any such agreements.   But the situation remains the same - it is only a Royal Grain if it is conveying the Monarch - end of. (And yes - I was deeply involved in planning one in post privatisation times as well and involved in occasional arrangements for journeys by a member of the Family other than the Monarch).

[Bomag]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

And this thread is entitled 'Royal Train 1970 - 1985'. - quite a while before any naive, and railway terminology ignorant, Civil Servant wrote any sort  franchise terminology or drafted any such agreements.   But the situation remains the same - it is only a Royal Grain if it is conveying the Monarch - end of. (And yes - I was deeply involved in planning one in post privatisation times as well and involved in occasional arrangements for journeys by a member of the Family other than the Monarch).

 

I think you are missing the point that irrespective of what you called it, or what it was called in BR paperwork, the topic is de-facto the 'Royal Train', even if it is not de-jure in your terms. In fact any train carrying a 'royal' is a Royal Train even if it is not formed of 29xx stock (e.g. a Class 321 dustybin to Kings Lynn). Even BR could not overrule the English language.

[Gwiwer]

We may be in danger of straying into semantic rather than railway details here. 
 

As I recall the annual royal beano to Epsom races was facilitated by a locomotive-worked train of bulled-up blue-grey stock to Tattenham Corner. 
 

Not “the” Royal Train this was “a” Royal Train.  

[keefer]

A common alternative was a 4TC with the TRB & TBFK from a 4REP instead of the usual FK & TBSK. 

(presumably with 73142 if it was available.)

Edited September 11, 2020 by keefer

[DavidB-AU]

18 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

And this thread is entitled 'Royal Train 1970 - 1985'. - quite a while before any naive, and railway terminology ignorant, Civil Servant wrote any sort  franchise terminology or drafted any such agreements.   But the situation remains the same - it is only a Royal Grain if it is conveying the Monarch - end of. (And yes - I was deeply involved in planning one in post privatisation times as well and involved in occasional arrangements for journeys by a member of the Family other than the Monarch).

 

You are missing the point that there are publicly available primary sources from before, during and after that era which say otherwise. There is en entire series of Royal Train Notices for travel by the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales, Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, etc in the National Archives. Official documents calling them Royal Trains. Historians require documentary evidence, not assertions.

 

Cheers

David