‘Fondest of farewells’: King Charles scraps royal train in palace cost-cutting measure

Britain’s royal train will soon leave the station for the last time after King Charles III seeks to cut expenses, ending a tradition that dates back to Queen Victoria.

James Chalmers, the palace official in charge of the king’s financial affairs confirmed the train will be decommissioned as it costs too much to maintain and would have needed a significant upgrade for more advanced rail systems.

“In moving forwards we must not be bound by the past,” Mr Chalmers said.

“Just as so many parts of the royal household’s work have 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-looking in our allocation of funding.”

The private train was conceived after Queen Victoria commissioned a pair of special coaches to accommodate her travels in 1869, but now it consists of nine railcars that can be hitched to commercial locomotives.

It will be decommissioned sometime before the current maintenance contract expires in 2027 but will be taken around the UK before it is removed from service.

Although the royal carriages had been used extensively during the late Queen Elizabeth’s later years, these are now used seldom by King Charles III and other senior royals.

The Palace finance report from 2024-2025 show the train was used on only two occasions, with one two-day trip from Gloucestershire to Staffordshire and then London, costing more than £44,000 (AUD $92,000), as reported by the BBC .

However, the report show the sovereign grant (the fund distributed by the UK Treasury to pay for the royal family’s official duties) will remain at £86,300,000 (AUD $180,000,000) for a fourth consecutive year.

As Buckingham Palace pointed out, while the sovereign grant has been unchanged for the past four years, inflation has eroded its value.

The royal family’s finances remain a topic of public debate, after the king pledged to slim down the monarchy and cut costs which he hopes will ensure the institution’s survival.

During the 2024-2025 report period, the royal family carried out over 1,900 engagements, with almost 94,000 guests attending events at royal residences, and included diplomatic occasions, such as hosting Qatar’s state visit to the UK.

As part of those duties King Charles will host US President Donald Trump for his unprecedented second state visit to Britain later in year, which the UK government hopes will help cement close ties between the two allies.

The late Queen Elizabeth welcomed Trump to Buckingham Palace for a three-day state visit in June 2019 during his first term in office, during which he had a private lunch with the sovereign, as well as having tea with Charles, who was then heir.

That visit already put Trump in a select group of US presidents, as only Barack Obama and George W Bush were afforded official state visits to Britain during Elizabeth’s record 70 years on the throne.

-with AP.