In the early days, there was no option but to be accommodated in bunk rooms, whereas in later I years it was possible to reside in individual seating. ‘The Royal Highlander’ may not have the luxury and glamour of the more famous ‘Orient Express’, but the atmosphere created by this ‘special’ train can more than match a departure from Istanbul!
It may not be the setting for Agatha Christie's ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ – and as far as I am aware, no-one was ever murdered on the ‘Royal Highlander – but it is no less evocative a scene than the one portrayed in fiction.
Artist Philip D Hawkins has captured so well on canvas the precise atmosphere that would shortly reach a crescendo prior to departure as the high-pressure safety-valves lift, and roaring steam ascends into the night sky.
Most of my generation of railway enthusiasts were brought up on the BBC ‘Railway Roundabout’ series presented by David St John Thomas and Patrick Whitehouse. Over and above that television production, David wrote many articles, one of which featured himself and Patrick returning home on the ‘Up’ ‘Royal Highlander’. Their description of the departure is so memorable to those of us who were fortunate to savour such an experience as that of a journey on an overnight train.
“If there is a single platform in the provinces that has seen greater drama than any other, it must surely be the longest curved one at Inverness, No 2. That is where our ‘Royal Highlander’ for London, a sitting, eating and sleeping train, waits while the sun is still high in the sky on a late August evening in 1959. We feel our own touch of drama as we check not only for our own but others’ names on the lists of sleeping car berth allocations posted at the platform head. There is ours sandwiched between household names travelling second like us, though first class has a higher proportion of Honourables, Lords and Right Honourables.”
“As we walk two-thirds of the length of the platform to check in and deposit our baggage in our LMS two-berth sleeper, two Black Fives back onto the train … and we think what has used this platform in bygone times. Always first to come to mind are those ‘caravan trains’ of pre-Grouping days, monstrous
