The Royal Train

Now you have read memories from Kingswood residents about the Queen’s Derby trains, Richard Harris tells us more about those trains

Royal Train passing through Chipstead Station 1953

In June 1953, a few days after her Coronation, The Queen travelled by train to Tattenham Corner to watch her first runner in the Derby. Her horse, Aureole bred by her father George VI, finished second which is the closest Her Majesty has ever come to winning the race.

She arrived travelling from Victoria up the Chipstead Valley line to Tattenham Corner. Although it had been electrified in 1928, in the 1950’s and 60’s the royal train was still headed by a steam engine. It must have been a magnificent sight to see four Pullman style coaches pulled by one of the premier locomotives of the former Southern Railway climbing the gradient through Chipstead, Kingswood and Tadworth to reach the summit of the Downs at Tattenham Corner. Along the route crowds would line the platforms to welcome and wave at the royal train.

Figure 2 shows its arrival at Tattenham Corner in 1959, the station master with a red flag guiding the engine driver to the exact position to enable the Queen to dismount from her carriage in front of the platform awning leading to the car that would take her to the racecourse. The engine, a Schools Class 4-4-0, St Olaves, has four head code discs denoting a royal train. As The Queen’s Derby attendances are private rather than official visits, the carriages to the left are positioned to give privacy to her arrival.

In subsequent years steam traction heading the royal train gave way initially to electric, then diesel and eventually electrodiesel locomotives but from the late 1990’s the traditional journey by train was discontinued and the royal party arrived by car. The Derby itself is not the major sporting event it was seventy years ago, but for many years of her reign the Chipstead Valley line, perhaps uniquely for a branch, played host to an annual visit from the royal train which added to the sense of occasion of the most famous flat race in the world.

Royal Train arriving at Tattenham Corner 1959