When, at midday on 13 June 1842, Queen Victoria first boarded a train to carry her on the eighteen-mile journey from Slough to Paddington, she inaugurated a relationship between the court and the railways whose continuity is only now under threat. Less propitiously, that mechanical excursion heralded the decline of one of the most venerable departments of the Royal Household, the Stables. A further diminution in the live horse-power of the Stables was ushered in sixty years later with the acquisition by King Edward VII in 1901 of a Daimler motor car – the first such machine to cross the threshold of the Mews. Today the contribution of the Stables to ceremonial occasions is impressive, immaculate and professional, while transportation of the royal family remains the first duty of the Mews. However, while the scope of the department undoubtedly has broadened dramatically, with respect to their primary role, the Stables today present scarcely a shadow of what was once a pivotal element in the everyday life of the court.