Vintage Train Recaptures Era of Luxury Travel
Experience luxury travel with vintage train, The Chairman’s Set, offering glamorous comforts of a bygone era.
In northwest England, a busy rail hub seems like an unlikely portal to the golden age of train travel. The Pendolinos trains, when not grounded by rail strikes, speed through the countryside, offering weary travelers meager comforts. However, just across the tracks, the UK’s only privately owned train, The Chairman’s Set, exudes the glamorous air of a bygone era.
A Luxurious Train
The Chairman’s Set, a procession of repurposed former Caledonian Sleeper coaches in classic 1950s British Rail livery, is designed to be enjoyed. Sara Oliver, the interior designer, describes her client as a ‘rail enthusiast’ who already owned several locomotives before discussing the project in late 2017.
Oliver’s motivation for adding sleeper carriages was to facilitate extended trips to the most beautiful tracks in Britain, many of which run through remote parts of Scotland. Her first glimpse of the rolling stock was in 2019 at a disused iron works in Weardale, County Durham. The long-serving coaches were singularly uninspiring, with ‘sticky purple carpets infused with spilt stew and surrounded by chrome and laminate’.
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Design and Restoration
Independent Rail gutted the coaches, creating a near-cylindrical blank canvas on which Oliver’s ideas began to take shape. Part of the thrill of the project was the paucity of precedents, with no references to draw from. Oliver found inspiration in films, notes from her son’s honeymoon on the Andean Explorer, and research into trains around the world.
Her pièce de résistance, a glass door with a juliet balcony at the end of the master bedroom, drew from a Japanese train design. The wooden panelling throughout replicated a section of Lutyens original that her daughter had stored in her barn. Every fabric had to be rigorously fire-tested, and the G-force applications for all objects had to be calculated to minimize potential dangers in the event of an accident.
Technical considerations included creating a shower tray that prevents water from spilling over the edge when the train tilts and installing a bronze McKinney & Co curtain pole into a curved metal ceiling. Oliver spent the first six months of the project drawing up the budget, itemizing each object and material to be scrutinized by the operating company, Locomotive Services.
A Luxurious Interior
The resulting suite of ‘rooms’ manages to be both stately and comfortable, with large squishy sofas, luxurious soft furnishings, and gentle lighting. Antiques and adornments have been judiciously selected, with a few impactful pieces in each coach.
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It all feels minutely considered, context-appropriate, and understatedly luxurious. The main wall decoration throughout is a series of exquisite marquetry panels. Several of the panels depict scenes from favourite nursery rhymes.
Trains played a singular role in Albert Einstein’s thought experiments, used first to theorize and then to communicate relativity. Fitting, then, that The Chairman’s Train should perform an act of time travel all of its own, evoking a bygone era of luxury and elegance. As the train travels through the countryside, it’s not just the scenery that’s changing – it’s the sense of time itself, slowing down to reveal the beauty of a forgotten age.
The Chairman’s Train is available for private charter, offering a unique opportunity to experience the luxury and elegance of a bygone era. For more information, email [email protected]. To contact Sara Oliver, visit www.studio-nomad.net.
