Cliff Notes – Royal train to be decommissioned
- King Charles will bid a “fond farewell” to the royal train, which is set to be decommissioned due to high future running costs.
- Annual financial reports indicated a £91 million boost in royal funding, with royal travel expenses rising to £4.7 million.
- Moving forward, the royal family will utilise two new helicopters, with plans for the train’s carriages to potentially be put on display.
Royal train to be decommissioned with family to rely on two new helicopters – as annual accounts reveal the expense of maintenance | UK News
Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite form of transport, the royal train, has reached the end of the line and is set to be decommissioned.
At a briefing revealing the annual financial report for the Royal Family, and confirming details of a huge £91m cash injection for royal funding, it was announced that the King will be bidding the “fondest of farewells” to the royal train.
James Chalmers, Keeper of the Privy Purse, described the move as an example of the royal household applying “fiscal discipline” in its drive to deliver “value for money”.
The annual accounts showed the Sovereign Grant, which supports the official duties of the Royal Family, remained at £86.3m, while royal travel increased by £500,000 to £4.7m and payroll costs were up £2m to £29.9m.
Mr Chalmers said: “The royal train, of course, has been part of national life for many decades, loved and cared for by all those involved.
“But in moving forward, we must not be bound by the past. Just as so many parts of the royal household’s work have been modernised and adapted to reflect the world of today, so too, the time has come to bid the fondest of farewells, as we seek to be disciplined and forward in our allocation of funding.
“With His Majesty’s support, it has therefore been decided that the process to decommission the royal train will commence next year.”
The King and other members of the Royal Family will rely on two new helicopters when the nine-carriage train stops running ahead of a maintenance contract ending in early 2027, according to the annual royal accounts.
It was decided the future running costs were too high, but it’s hoped the train will make further visits to parts of the UK, before a long-term home is found for the carriages to potentially go on display.
The King is said to have fond memories of the train, which features a carriage created for Charles in the mid-1980s, which he still uses now he is King, and the Prince of Wales is aware and supports the decommissioning decision.
A brief history of the royal train
The current royal train came into service for Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.
One of two locomotives pulls this train, the 67006 “Royal Sovereign” or the 67005 “Queen’s Messenger”. These locomotives use eco-conscious biofuel made from vegetable oil waste.
When the King travelled from London to Cwmbran in Wales in 2017 it cost £130.84 per mile. A standard rail ticket would have cost £1.30 per mile.
The train is stationed and maintained in a secure compound at the northwest corner of the Wolverton Railway Works. Network Rail owns the royal train, and DB Cargo UK maintains and operates it.
The train’s carriages include the King’s saloon – comprising a sitting room, bedroom, and bathroom – as well as the Royal Family’s 12-seater dining car and kitchen.
In 1842, Queen Victoria became the first British monarch to travel by train and commissioned a collection of private carriages for the royal train 27 years later.
Royal finances
The queen decorated the carriages in 23-carat gold and blue silk. They were in service until the early 1900s but are now on display at the National Railway Museum in York.
Royal travel has always taken place in secret and not even train staff know which royals are onboard. However, extra precautions were taken to keep royal train travel secret during the world wars.
During the First World War, King George V travelled the country via the royal train so much, it became his temporary home.
Total cost of official royal travel revealed
The rundown of royal finances – from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 – covers the months following the King and the Princess of Wales’s double cancer diagnosis.
Eye-catching figures released include a £400,500 bill to fly the King and Queen and their staff to Australia and Samoa last October. The total cost of official royal travel was £4.7m – a rise of £500,000 from the previous year, with rising fuel costs as the main reason the cost has risen.
A huge uplift in the sovereign grant, which funds the public work of the Royal Family, was also confirmed for the next two years, going up from £86.3m to £132m.
It comes as wind farm deals on Crown Estate land helped boost profits to £1.1bn. It means an extra £91.4m of income from 2025-26 and 2026-27, but palace representatives stressed this will go towards finishing refurbishment work at Buckingham Palace and other heritage building projects.
Campaign group calls for proper scrutiny of royal finances
Graham Smith, from the anti-monarchy group Republic, said: “The whole process of reporting the finances of the royal household needs to be taken out of the hands of the royal household.
“It should be dealt with by the Treasury and it should be reported by the government to parliament where it can be properly scrutinised.
“For example, the detail of their travel cost are not broken down and in parliament people can ask serious questions about why they’re spending so much money on themselves”.
Republic has released its own report where it suggests the full annual cost of the monarchy is well over half a billion pounds when factors such as security and unpaid taxes are taken into consideration. These figures have not been verified.