Picture this: you are sipping a martini in a sumptuously decorated room where the light from Robert Kime lamps glints off oak-panelled walls. The scent of cigar smoke wafts in from a balcony while dinner awaits next door. A Thursday night at 5 Hertford Street? The evening after a shoot? No – you’re on a train hurtling across the moors.
This is what it feels like to own a private train. Before the jet age, having one’s own train was the for billionaires. JP Morgan’s preferred mode of was his Pullman railcar.
Bessie Smith, the Beyoncé of the 1920s, travelled around America in a custom-made railroad car – essentially a two- storey speakeasy with bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen – that was a rolling centre of the debauchery that made up the blues scene. In recent decades, the private train has rather disappeared from the billionaire’s toy box, but now it is making a comeback. The newest, The Chairman’s Set, is in Britain and has its own steam engine.
Millionaire businessman Jeremy Hosking began work on his train seven years ago, enlisting the help of -based designer Sara Oliver and Independent Rail. Now this fabulous steamer whizzes through Scottish stations en route to his home, where he has had his own track built. Amazingly, the train is allowed to travel anywhere on the British network, although because steam trains are no longer permitted to run in , a small concession has to be made and it switches to diesel.
What Oliver and her team have created is nothing short of a palace on wheels. Ironically, this is not a phrase one can use for the Royal Train, which is operated by the state. The Royal Train last had a facelift in the penny-pinching 1970s, so any glamour that Queen Elizabeth II once enjoyed was stripped back to a wholly utilitarian mode of traversing the country.
It is safe to say that the Royal Train’s design, replete with avocado bathrooms and ’70s Formica, is the antithesis of Oliver’s achievement. And what an achievement! Every item had to be scrutinised by the operating company Locomotive Services. This included testing the G-force durability of many materials used.
Larger items were made in situ by craftsmen. What truly takes one into the novels of Agatha Christie is the marquetry-panelled master bedroom, decked out with a Juliet balcony. To realise this dream, you need a spare couple of million.
The buying of the carriages and the locomotive is the cheap part – Oliver selected hers from a disused ironworks yard in County . It is everything else that gets expensive. The true cost of The Chairman’s Set is a secret; but a fair guess would be around £22 million, which was the amount spent on The Golden Eagle, one of Europe’s luxury train hotels, akin to the Orient Express.
In America, train travel has been in decline since cheap domestic flights were introduced in the ’70s. But a few millionaires do keep train travel alive and glamorous. Bob Lowe, who made his fortune in the aeronautical business, is one of 80 such people in the US.
His pair of carriages have beds, showers and a galley kitchen. Lowe takes his family and friends for jaunts up and down the country, but how does he manage this without owning an engine? In true American , he hitches a ride. A few weeks before he sets off, he asks Amtrak, the American network operator, if he can attach his carriages to their trains.
For this, he pays Amtrak $3.67 for every mile travelled. Then there is the maintenance and storage, which in 2017 came to £125,000 for both carriages.
There are other options. Luxury Train Tickets offers experiences varying from brunch on a classic steamer to chartering trains for parties. Tickets for a dining experience hover around £500.
The British Pullman has the capacity to host a private party for 226 people. Much like buying a tailor-made suit, you can always go to for a cheaper alternative. Gaj Singh, the Maharaja of , owned a white steam train complete with an Aga.
Many of these trains have now been taken over by companies who have made them available for charter, such as the Maharajah Express or the Nilgiri Mountain Express. The downsides to owning a private train? There isn’t much spontaneity – trips have to be planned in advance. But what could be chicer than to arrive at a party in a cloud of steam from your very own train?.
