I was first on board the UK's only private train - here's what surprised me most

Train travel in the UK is often affected by delays, signal failures, and overcrowded carriages. The Chairman's Train provides an alternative by operating as the UK’s first fully private train. It uses a string of remodelled sleeper carriages hauled by vintage locomotives, aiming to recreate the romance of rail journeys with purpose. The development process takes more than 10 years and involves taking disused Caledonian Sleeper carriages, stripping them to bare frames, and rebuilding them from scratch. The work includes repairing frames, refitting interior equipment, and restoring woodwork using in-house joiners and carpenters.

"Enter The Chairman's Train. This - the UK's first fully private train - is bringing back the charm of train travel. A string of remodelled sleeper carriages hauled by vintage locomotives is offering travellers a new way to travel - one steeped in gilded, Golden Age glory and reverent transport history. The process of development is a lesson in slow travel itself. More than 10 years in the making, the team at Locomotive Services Limited took disused Caledonian Sleeper carriages and stripped them back to their bare bones, before rehabilitating them to their full, glorious potential (and then some)."

"We visited the LSL train depot in Crewe, where managing director Tony Bush explained the process. "One of the barriers to entry that we found 10 years ago was that nobody wanted to sell us anything because we were the new guys on the block. So, we began buying dilapidated scrap vehicles and gutting them, bringing them down to the absolute mainframe," he said, as we crowded inside the shell of a British Rail Mark 1 coach (a standard issue mid-century passenger carriage)."

""You can see here how this vehicle has been stripped down to literally the frame and nothing else. And then we rebuild it from scratch - so we repair the frame, and then refit all of the interior equipment. We have our own joiners and carpenters, who then refit all the woodwork ab""

Read at CN Traveller