Just as the invention of the coach made a huge difference to the way monarchs used their houses, so did the invention of the railways. Neither Balmoral, Osborne House or Sandringham would have been purchased and built had it not been for the railway. Queen Victoria’s first rail journey (Slough to Paddington) was in June 1842 and although she was a regular user of the railways never exploited to the full the possibilities of train travel (there was no dining car on Victorian Royal Trains for instance). It was only with the new train made in 1902 for Edward VII that the train became, in effect, a mobile palace. By Edward’s death there were five royal trains which ran on different railway lines to different regular royal destinations.
The train built for the Great Western Railway in the 1940s remained in use by the royal family until the 1960s and in 1977 four new saloons were made to replace the old cars. The train is made up for each journey and can comprise between five and nine vehicles. There are bedroom cars with en suite bathrooms there is a dining room and a study and the Prince of Wales had his own cars with a bedroom and study of his own.