{"id":235830,"date":"2025-07-03T22:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T22:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/235830\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T22:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T22:18:09","slug":"royal-train-reaches-last-stop-as-king-charles-ends-150-year-old-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/235830\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Train reaches last stop as King Charles ends 150-year-old tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

King Charles III arrives by royal train for a visit to Pickering in Yorkshire, England, in 2023. The train will be decommissioned sometime before the current maintenance contract expires in 2027.Charlotte Graham\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

The Royal Train will soon leave the station for the last time.<\/p>\n

King Charles III has accepted it\u2019s time to decommission the train, whose history dates back to Queen Victoria, because it costs too much to operate and would have needed a significant upgrade for more advanced rail systems, Buckingham Palace said Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn moving forwards, we must not be bound by the past,\u2019\u2019 said James Chalmers, the palace official in charge of the King\u2019s financial affairs. \u201cJust as so many parts of the royal household\u2019s work have modernized 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.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Opinion: The King of Canada, and other things nobody understands<\/a><\/p>\n

The train, actually a suite of nine railcars that can be hitched to commercial locomotives, will be decommissioned sometime before the current maintenance contract expires in 2027. That will bring to an end a tradition that dates back to 1869, when Queen Victoria commissioned a pair of special coaches to accommodate her travels.<\/p>\n

The decision was announced during the palace\u2019s annual briefing for reporters on the royal finances.<\/p>\n

A newsreel from 1951 shows the royal train bringing Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh to a London station, where they are met by the Queen and a three-year-old Charles. The royal couple were returning from a six-week tour of Canada.<\/p>\n

The royal family<\/a> will for the fourth consecutive year receive public funding of \u00a386.3-million (US$118-million), including \u00a334.5-million to fund the remodeling of Buckingham Palace, in the 12 months through March of 2026.<\/p>\n

This money comes from a mechanism known as the Sovereign Grant, which sets aside 12 per cent of the net income from the Crown Estate to fund the official duties of the king and other members of the royal family.<\/p>\n

The Crown Estate is a portfolio of properties that are owned by the monarch during his reign. The properties are professionally managed and the King can\u2019t dispose of the assets.<\/p>\n

The Crown Estate is one of the many relics of Britain\u2019s feudal past. King George III, who ruled during the American Revolution, surrendered management of the crown lands to Parliament in 1760 in return for a fixed payment from the Treasury.<\/p>\n

The royal finances remain a topic of public debate, with Charles pledging to slim down the monarchy and cut costs as he seeks to ensure the institution\u2019s survival.<\/p>\n

Buckingham Palace was quick to point out that while the Sovereign Grant has been unchanged for the past four years, inflation has eroded its value. If the grant had increased in line with inflation, it would have been about \u00a3106-million this year, the palace said.<\/p>\n

The basic grant was supplemented with \u00a321.5-million (US$29.5 million) of income generated by properties outside the Crown Estate. This income increased by \u00a31.7-million, driven by a record year for visitors to Buckingham Palace and special tours of the newly renovated East Wing.<\/p>\n

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Queen Elizabeth II and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, arrive by royal train in Cheshire in 2018.PETER BYRNE\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Craig Prescott, a constitutional law expert at Royal Holloway, University of London, who focuses on the political role of the monarchy, said funding for the royals is relatively small when compared to the overall cost of the British state and it provides tangible benefits for the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something that puts Britain on the world stage in a way that few other things do,\u2019\u2019 he said, noting that Queen Elizabeth II\u2019s funeral was the largest gathering of world leaders in history and the coronation was broadcast around the world. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things that people think about when they think about Britain.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Over the past year, Charles traveled to Australia and attended the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa \u2013 his first as the organization\u2019s head. The royals also took center stage at the 80th anniversaries of D-Day and V-E Day, which marked the end of World War II in Europe, and welcomed the leaders of Japan and Qatar as they made state visits to the U.K.<\/p>\n

Overall, the royals made 1,900 public appearances in the U.K. and overseas. About 93,000 guests attended 828 events at the royal palaces.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Royal Train at Cardiff Central Rail Station in Cardiff, U.K., in 2018.Rebecca Naden\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: King Charles III arrives by royal train for a visit to Pickering in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[6934,6925,6935,1500,6918,6936,943,6917,6930,6931,6927,6919,6916,1700,2266,728,6929,6923,6946,6920,6921,1234,6926,388,3611,6607,603,6941,6942,6944,6939,6943,6937,6940,6922,6932,6933,285,3027,6938,5105,7710,519,448,6924,53,183,6928,727,263,6945],"class_list":{"0":"post-235830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-northwest-territories","38":"tag-nova-scotia","39":"tag-nunavut","40":"tag-ontario","41":"tag-pei","42":"tag-photos","43":"tag-political-news","44":"tag-political-opinion","45":"tag-politics","46":"tag-politics-news","47":"tag-quebec","48":"tag-royal","49":"tag-royal-families","50":"tag-royal-family","51":"tag-royals","52":"tag-sports-news","53":"tag-technology","54":"tag-travel","55":"tag-trudeau","56":"tag-us-news","57":"tag-world-news","58":"tag-yukon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}