Funeral train

A funeral train is a train specially chartered in order to carry a coffin or coffins to a place of interment. Funeral trains today are often reserved for leaders and national heroes, as part of a state funeral, but in the past were sometimes the chief means of transporting coffins and mourners to graveyards. Funeral trains remain mostly steam locomotive hauled, due to the more romantic image of the steam train against more modern diesel or electric locomotives.

The first funeral train was run by The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company on 7 November 1854. Trains ran once a day from London Necropolis railway station to Brookwood Cemetery. The train carried not only the bodies of the dead, but the parties of mourners who had come to attend the funeral services. Different classes were available for both the living and the dead; a more expensive first class ticket would provide a more ornate coffin and greater care of the body during transit. The London Necropolis Railway was run on the tracks of the London and South Western Railway, who feared that regular passengers would shun locomotives which had previously hauled funeral trains, and therefore purchased an entirely new fleet exclusively for the Necropolis line. The public were initially reserved about the project; one bishop expressed fears that "It may sometimes happen that persons of opposite characters might be carried in the same conveyance. For instance, the body of some profligate spendthrift might be placed in a conveyance with the body of some respectable member of the church, which would shock the feelings of his friends". Others felt that the railway industry, which was less than 20 years old and still very much a new technology, was too hectic and loud, ill-befitting the sombre mourning associated with Christian funeral services.

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