Funeral train
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.
[2] 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.
New operating procedures required that coffins be carried in a separate carriage from other cargo; as regular services to Brookwood station used electric multiple unit trains which did not have goods vans, coffins for Brookwood had to be shipped to Woking and then carried by road for the last part of the journey, or a special train had to be chartered.
[5] Since Mountbatten, the only railway funeral to be held in the United Kingdom has been that of former National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers General Secretary Jimmy Knapp, carried from London to Kilmarnock for burial in August 2001.
Operation London Bridge planned for the body of Elizabeth II to be transported by the British Royal Train in the event of her death in Scotland, but instead the body was flown to RAF Northolt from Edinburgh Airport and transported by state hearse to Windsor, making her the first monarch in almost two centuries not to receive a funeral train.
[10] Russia: In 1894, the body of Tsar Alexander III, was transported by train from Livadia Palace in the Crimea, back to St. Petersburg, by way of Moscow.
United States: The following presidents transported in funeral trains were Abraham Lincoln (April 1865), James Garfield (1881), Ulysses S. Grant (1885), William McKinley (1901), Warren G. Harding (1923), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1945), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1969), and George H.W.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy's body was brought by train from New York City to Washington DC following his assassination in 1968, a crowd estimated at one million lined the trackside.
On June 5, 2013, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, an advocate of public transit and Amtrak, was transported from Secaucus Junction to Washington.
Founder of the Republic of Turkey Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's coffin was transported to the capital Ankara by a funeral train from İzmit where it was brought to on the battlecruiser Yavuz, ex SMS Goeben.
Queen Ingrid's funeral, including the train transfer with a steam engine, is documented in a lengthy report by Danish television and available online.
