parliamentary train

plural parliamentary trains

1. UKhistoricalrail transportA cheap, slow public passenger train as provided for under the Railway Regulation Act 1844 (which ordered railways to run at least one train a day each way, at a cost to passengers of no more than one penny a mile, on every railway line in the country).

   1885, W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado, Act II, in The Mikado, and Other Plays, New York: Modern Library, 1917, p. 42, https://archive.org/details/mikadootherplays00gilb The idiot who, in railway carriages, / Scribbles on window panes, / We only suffer / To ride on a buffer / In Parliamentary trains.

   1 more example

   He [Gladstone] also required the operators to run 'Parliamentary Trains' - one each day calling at every station at a fare of not more than a penny per mile for Third Class.

   2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 34

2. UKrail transportA passenger train that serves a line or station very infrequently (often only once a day or once a week), allowing the train operator to effectively end the service without getting official permission to close the line.

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   Once a week a train leaves a London station it shouldn’t, and you have just a few weeks left to catch a ride before it stops, possibly forever. This is the Chiltern Railway’s parliamentary train service and it is both a training exercise for Chiltern drivers and a legacy of a curious quirk of railway legislation

   2022 November 15, Ian Mansfield, “Last chance to ride Chiltern’s parliamentary train”, in Ian Visits

   Synonyms: parliamentary service, parliamentary