How the Chairman’s Train is redefining luxury rail travel - The Times

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Jeremy Hosking has always been a rail buff, or “gricer” in train-spotting speak. As a young boy, during the final years of steam in the 1960s, he would go out spotting at Weybridge in Surrey with his older brother, hoping to catch a glimpse of the steam-hauled Bournemouth Belle. At that time, steam engines were being withdrawn by British Railways, the equity investment entrepreneur says, and he became fixated with trying to keep hold of something that was about to disappear. It is a feeling that has not gone away, the 68-year-old says. “Although in later years, it’s become a matter of childhood obsession meets midlife crisis.”

Hosking’s heritage railway empire, Locomotive Services Group, began in 1998, when he funded the restoration of Braunton, a 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotive, originally built in 1946 and saved from the scrapheap. Since then, the Surrey-born businessman has acquired 15 steam engines, along with vintage diesel and electric units and rolling stock, which are operated on excursions through companies such as Steam Dreams, Statesman Rail and Midland Pullman. The eclectic mix of vehicles ranges from mid-century steam engines to Intercity express units and British Rail’s first high-speed carriages. They are kept at the depot at Crewe, where the group restores and maintains its own vehicles, as well as private and trust-owned locomotives and carriages.

When I join Hosking aboard the Chairman’s Train on an overnight sojourn from London to Scotland, amid a scream of engine whistles that evoke images of porters bustling with trunks, he tells me of his dream of running a private train of the kind once used by monarchs, presidents and Vanderbilts.

Its creation, he says, was a “series of baby steps”, rather than a fully fledged concept. “The idea was that it would be nice to build up a few private vehicles that we wouldn’t necessarily use on our day trip charter trains,” he says. “The dining car was created first by a fellow called Nick Dodson. After we had the dining car, we thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have a drawing room for people to go to after dinner, a sleeping car to retire to, and so it went on.”

The opportunity to expand came in 2019 when Hosking bought several mid-century carriages that had formed the old Caledonian Sleeper. They were entrusted to the interior designer Sara Oliver, who had met Hosking in Hong Kong in the 1980s. “Jeremy’s initial brief,” she says, “was: ‘Can you make everything tomato soup-proof?’ Then a couple of days later, he called and said, ‘Can you make it a bit jungly?’” After studying works on the golden age of travel and films such as Murder on the Orient Express and Some Like It Hot, alongside notes from her son’s trip on the Andean Explorer, Oliver set to work.

The jungle theme — a thread which runs throughout the seven parlour and sleeping cars in the hand-picked antiques and fittings, elephant marquetry, panels depicting monkeys and locomotive nameplates — was chosen because of its evocative nature. “It reflects a mixture of nostalgia, childhood imagination and romanticism,” Hosking says.

There was also a desire to foster a sense of geographical curiosity and adventure. “We hoped to evoke romance and excitement,” he says. “Railways, after all, have always enabled exploration.” Hence the first edition of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book tucked alongside 19th-century railway journals in Mount Mgahinga, the train’s plush, Lutyens-panelled drawing room, which has been dubbed “5 Hertford Street on rails”. It is a fitting descriptor — Hosking wanted the train to feel like a private members’ club.

The theme is particularly evident in his favourite coach, Zanzibar, which he likens to a safari tent, with its leather director’s chairs, rattan furniture and sub-Saharan curios. “It’s a bit colonial,” he says, smiling. “I was happy for the train to be a bit politically incorrect. It feels like a sort of safari vehicle. It’s an observation car and the action’s really outside.”

Bespoke marquetry panelling, executed by A Dunn & Son, the firm that produced marquetry for the Titanic, is a focal point of the bedroom, bar and parlour cars. Tongue-in-cheek interpretations from nostalgic children’s novels are depicted — The Wind in the Willows, Winnie-the-Pooh and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — including a Mad Hatter’s tea party scene that features Fergus and Eddie, Hosking’s labradors.

A wine cellar concealed beneath a trap door in the snug, subwoofers hidden in every pouffe and a boot room to shake off detritus after hikes at remote stops are further thoughtful additions. For the exterior of the carriages, British Railways’ Crimson Lake and cream tones, affectionately known as “blood and custard”, were chosen. This was the livery previously used for mainline express coaches.

Each carriage was designed individually. Ardnamurchan houses the Emperor Suite, an expansive 450 sq ft bedroom that occupies the entire coach. Because Oliver wanted a Juliet balcony, “the end of the carriage needed to be lopped off and another section welded on to create it,” she says. “To have the luxury of one carriage to house the bedroom, sitting area, dressing room and bathroom gives a rare feeling of space in the constraints of a train.”

Showering in the underfloor-heated marble bathroom in the Emperor Suite and dressing in black tie as the train gently sways makes me feel like a protagonist in an Edith Wharton or Graham Greene novel. Overnighting in the expansive suite is an equally surreal experience, the soothing rumble of the engine stirring me to consciousness in the morning beneath bedclothes embroidered by the English textile artist Rebecca Cole.

The dining experiences aboard are as satiating as you would expect. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and afternoon tea are served in the Club Car dining room, the Helicon piano bar car and the velvety surrounds of the Mount Mgahinga drawing room. Silver cutlery, crockery inscribed with the names of company locomotives and etched crystal glasses grace white linen tablecloths. Menus showcase native ingredients from the counties through which we journey — on mine, that includes Cumbrian lamb, Wye Valley asparagus and Hawarden Estate bread, all cooked and plated in the kitchen car.

In addition, Flora, a restored 1960s railbus, with a wood-burning stove, magnetic-top bar and lavatory fitted with a Morse code telegraph machine, can meet the train for smaller branch line excursions, such as crossing the Ribblehead viaduct.

Although the Chairman’s Train began operating in 2020 as a private charter service, it is now entering a new phase as additional carriages near completion. Bookable, customised journeys are on the cards. Two West Highland Experiences — a five-day voyage from London to Scotland’s west coast and back — ran this summer. More trips across the UK will be offered from 2027.

“The idea is to offer wealthy people the opportunity to create their own trips around their own particular obsessions,” Hosking says. “So if a rich American rings us up from Los Angeles saying, ‘I’d like to play on ten golf courses in ten days and I don’t want to live in hotels,’ we can do that.”

Getting the private train running was certainly not straightforward, Hosking says. The logistics of running private trains on a privatised network presents a litany of headaches. Then there are health and safety regulations, which demand that all heavy furniture be G-force tested and bolted down using plates beneath the carriages. Some old original furniture did not comply, but was allowed, through a loophole that Hosking calls “grandfather laws”. “Because freestanding seats in the vintage coaches were pre-existing, we were allowed them,” he says. The arrangement of the beds was also a consideration. UK laws stipulate that beds on trains have to be latitudinal (placed across the width of the carriage) to remain travelling through the night, which required careful planning.

The cost of restoring vintage coaches can be ruinous, Hosking says. Carriages can be bought “for nothing”, but “the danger is, you need to spend a million on each”, to strip back each one to the bare bones, before reconfiguring it and making it safe. In the case of the Chairman’s Train, each vehicle took 12-18 months to restore. “Financially, it’s been like the frog in the water,” Hosking says. “Turn up the heat and the frog will die. Just as one more coach or one more investment is finished, you’ve got to keep adding to things.”

His group has 150 permanent employees, 80 of whom are based at the depot in Crewe. Hosking has had to start an apprenticeship scheme to preserve fading restoration and maintenance skills.

The effort is worth it, he says, because of the way the rail journeys make him and others feel. “It triggers memories of going on family holidays on what we called Motorail back then — when you put the car on the train,” he says. “Memories often acquire a rose-tinted or sepia hue when viewed through the rear-view mirror.” And, as Hosking well understands, the fun in meaningful travel is getting to your destination — not just your final stop.

A day on the Chairman’s Train costs from £45,000 (to charter the whole train), thechairmanstrain.com

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