Great Western Coffee Shop

The publication of Charles's annual financial review yesterday came after the Civil List for other members of the Royal Family at the weekend. His position as the Duchy of Cornwall means he doesn't get a Civil List grant from the taxpayer, but the figures show a mixed bag of reducing costs and apparently extravagant expense.

For instance, the cost of travelling around the country and the world was cut from ^1.6 million the previous year to ^1.1 million. But he still took the Royal Train to travel the country, including a visit as part of an initiative called "the pub is the hub". That trip, from Kemble in Gloucestershire to Penrith in Cumbria, cost ^18,916 alone - a first class ticket would have been around ^250 per person - making it perhaps the most expensive trip to a pub ever made, even if it was to help an initiative to highlight the role of pubs in village life.

The Prince also used the Royal Train to get to Edinburgh at a cost of ^21,460 and for various engagements in Wales at a cost of ^43,258.

The use of the Royal Train did help reduce the Prince's carbon footprint - something he has spent the year campaigning on - and it was further helped by switching to green energy providers and increasing energy efficiency.

See http://thisissomerset.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=147472&command=displayContent&sourceNode=243687&home=yes&more_nodeId1=242222&contentPK=20988087

So a trip to Edinburgh by train for Charlie and his party costs almost ^20,000 - is that really extravagant?.  A Bath-London open return costs about ^130 and covers less than a third of the distance.  400 passengers  X ^130 = ^52000.   Even when you take into account that some of the passengers will be on cheaper tickets I reckon FGW takes about ^20,000 in fares from the passengers on each of its peak time Bath-London journeys.  If Charles can manage to take a train 400 miles for ^20,000 how come it costs FGW the same amount to take a train 125 miles?  Surely Charlie's costs mainly in terms of low stock utilitisation should be much much higher than FGW's     

I believe the issue was he used it to go to a pub.
Which is what they say makes it an extravagant expense.

Royal Train isn't franchised so isn't committed to paying the DfT a premium of ^1.13 billion during the franchise and to delivering a ^200 million investment programme  :D

... or to spending millions on the bidding process or on repainting the trains every couple of years in ever more hideous liveries, or repairing vandalised ticket machines or contributing to NRE, or printing timetable booklets etc etc.     

But if the royal train can be run at a cost which seem to be lower than the possible fare-take from a single journey if FGW HST-style seats were crammed into each coach and still make EWS a profit.  The amount of revenue generated by the intensively used FGW HSTs every day must be huge.  FGW makes a profit, but as a percentage of turnover it is not outrageously high.   This is because FGW has much higher costs than the Royal train or freight companies.  Some of those costs are unaviodable, and some of them are the fault of FGW, but the vast majority of them are imposed by the industry structure.  I can start to believe how the tax-payer support for the railways can be 3 times what is was before privatisation despite only modest passenger improvements and massive fare increases.

It pains me that the freight companies or rail-tour operators can make a profit despite charging much lower "fares" than the passenger TOCs and despite investing huge amounts of money in new trains, whilst the passenger TOCs are addicted to huge amounts of money from either the taxpayer or the farebox.