Final Stamps Featuring Queen Elizabeth II Released By Royal Mail

Nearly six months after her passing, the Royal Mail have released the final batch of stamps featuring Queen Elizabeth II.

From April 4, standard issue stamps will bear the image of King Charles III, who is set to receive his coronation on May 6 at Westminster Abbey.

These new stamps, however, were created to mark 100 years of the Flying Scotsman and were the final set to be approved by Queen Elizabeth II, and will feature her silhouette in the top right hand corner.

Stamps celebrating the iconic Flying Scotsman – a passenger route from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh – come in a set of 12, and are made in a collaboration between Royal Mail and the National Railway Museum.

Stamps will depict the train in different parts of the country, including through a blizzard on Heap Bridge in East Lancashire, or the carriages crossing the border at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Each image was carefully determined from a selection of hundreds of shots of the train.

As train legacies go, it’s safe to say that Flying Scotsman more than earned its stripes on the tracks. It was the first to reach 100mph on British railway lines and enjoyed 40 years carrying travellers between England and Scotland. Now, the Flying Scotsman’s legacy is set in stone at the National Railway Museum in York, where it has been a part of the collection since 2004.

The final stamps to feature Queen Elizabeth II go on sale today (February 28), and can be pre-ordered via the Royal Mail website for a crown jeweled fee of £17.70. They will be officially released on March 9.

Royal Mail have confirmed that the new stamps featuring King Charles III will become available on April 4, meaning these new stamps are the latest and last to feature the late Queen. Stamps featuring the King won’t be widely circulated until the stock of stamps featuring Queen Elizabeth have dwindled.

David Gold, Director of External Affairs & Policy, Royal Mail, said: “Flying Scotsman is a national treasure of engineering and design that conjures up the golden age of steam travel. This remarkable locomotive epitomises the romance of rail travel and is loved all by people over the world. We are honoured to mark this landmark milestone with a set of Special Stamps.”