If you guessed that the object in my hand in the photo in my last article was the door handle of the Royal Train, then you were right.

The royal train in Steam is one of the surviving salon coaches from Queen Victoria’s 1897 diamond jubilee royal train.

It was built in Swindon to take Victoria on trips to celebrate her diamond jubilee. She was no stranger to railways and, in June 1842, had become the first monarch to travel by train when she used the GWR to take her from Slough to Paddington.

The public appreciated this show of confidence in the railways.

It was this endorsement of the “Iron Horse” that propelled it on to the front pages of newspapers worldwide.

Soon there would be a railway station at Windsor, but the coup by the GWR put a nail in the coffin of the London to Windsor Railway Company.

In 1833 King William IV granted LWR permission for a rail link across royal land to Windsor from London, but a year later the GWR had an Act of Parliament for its railway, and GWR beat the opposition easily.

Railway companies all over the country wanted the young queen or, for that matter any member of the royal family, to travel with them and they all built royal trains.

As railways spread worldwide empire and commonwealth railway companies built special trains for royal visitors. In 1961 Sierra Leone constructed one for a short visit by the Queen to celebrate its independence.

I remember seeing it at the cinema, on Pathe, I think; and thinking to myself, does the Queen take her train everywhere with her?

All big railway companies built royal trains and kept them up to date as a sort of “test bed.”

Anything they wanted to test was fitted on the trains as it justified their cost.

Their aim was to give passengers the same luxury as royalty, something that has sadly long vanished in today’s railways.

At Steam the children who visit to re-enact the evacuee period of the Second World War use the royal train to store their props and exhibits. They are always commenting on the smell – it reeks of smoke, sulphur and polish.

A model of Queen Victoria looks out of the saloon car, and the children wave back to her!

I believe it’s the same saloon that carried her coffin from Paddington to Windsor when she died, though it is hard to tell, as there was more than one.

In 1941, during the Second World War, two new armoured saloon carriages were built for King George VI and the Queen.

Churchill and Eisenhower used the old ones; sadly the one used by Churchill was scrapped in 1991.