Queen Adelaide (1792-1849) first used a railway carriage at the end of 1839 and in so doing was the first member of the Royal Family to ride on a train.1 The former Queen-Consort used a type of carriage called a ‘railway mail coach’ between 1839 and 1844. This was the highest praised type of carriage at the opening of the London & Birmingham Railway. Euston was particularly convenient for her being a short ride from her London home of Marlborough House (between The Mall and Pall Mall). The railway also made her journeys to a number of temporary country residences, generally for reasons of her health, much easier. In response to this period of royal patronage, and presumably at a time that her original carriage was getting worn out, the directors of the London & Birmingham Railway, which was about to become the London & North Western Railway, in 18452 built her a new carriage that in many respects reflected the design of her original carriage of 1839.
It is this carriage of 1845 that can be found in the National Railway Museum. For a few years it was used by both Queen Adelaide, other members of the Royal Family and other VIPs,3 but sadly as her health declined the Queen preferred to travel to warmer climes, generally heading south of London, or residing in her other London home at Bushey House, Hampton Court. By 1847 the many journeys to the north of the country that characterised her regular use of the London & Birmingham railway were no more.
Queen Adelaide’s carriage had a number of outings twinned with Queen Victoria’s first state railway carriage, built by the London & Birmingham Railway at the end of 1843, serving very much as a semi-Royal vehicle. The Queen Dowager, as she was then known, passed away in 1849. Fortunately, for us and posterity, the LNWR kept the carriage in service for a few years, possibly as an invalid carriage,4 uising its feature of a dormeuse or bed,5 until the late 1850s when the carriage was put aside.
Having spent close to half a century in the dark, the carriage was ‘restored’ by the LNWR in 1904.6 Its first trip in its restored form being to the USA, it was then displayed and toured by not only the LNWR,
