If your loved one was very interested in trains, or you just want to do something that feels a bit special to commemorate them, a railway funeral can be a good option.
Victorian origins
The idea of using a train to carry a coffin to its final resting place originated with the Victorians, who wanted an efficient means of moving bodies outside London to the new outlying public cemeteries, built specifically to address the problem of the city’s overcrowded and dangerously unsanitary parish graveyards.
The Burials Act of 1851 prohibited the burying of new bodies within what were then London’s boundaries. This led to the founding of the ‘London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company’ to capitalise on the demand the new legislation had created for alternative burial sites. The company purchased a large plot of land in Surrey, some 25 miles from London, and then started running funeral trains there from the new London Necropolis Railway Station, close to the site which Waterloo Station occupies today.
Mourners and the deceased travelled together on the same locomotive, and the system was even designed to preserve the same class divisions after death that had existed in life,. The trains had two classes, and wealthier patrons could purchase a First Class ticket which would provide a more ornate coffin and ensure greater care and attention was paid to the remains of their loved one.
The fact that coffins and mourners of different classes occupied the same train made some observers sceptical that the system would work. According to an article in the Fortean Times, there was a bishop who complained 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.”
However, the public must have been able to overcome such concerns, as the service proved so successful that a train ran nearly every day for the next 50 years, and it didn’t fall out of use entirely until the station was bombed during World War Two and never subsequently repaired.
Peace Funerals, Derbyshire
Although the London Necropolis Railway is no longer in use, some bodies still make their final journey by train. This is particularly the case with state funerals: the last two British monarchs to be buried were both moved to Windsor Castle by the train, while Winston Churchill arrived at his state funeral using a locomotive which had been named in his honour.
However, the option is also open to people of more modest background, thanks to a Derbyshire-based company called Peace Funerals. They offer a modern-day railway funeral package, which can be anything from exclusively religious to entirely non-religious. After the service, the funeral party board a narrow-gauge train which transports them through a picturesque strip of the Golden Valley County Park. The coffin is carried to and buried in Golden Valley Woodland, where each burial is marked with a planted tree rather than a headstone.
While there are costs involved with this option, the picturesque nature of the railway can provide a perfect backdrop for a really special send-off, and one which provides an attractive link with the past.
For more information about this service, please see Peace Funerals’ website.
