THE National Railway Museum is appealing for the nation’s memories of the train which carried Winston Churchill to his funeral 50 years ago next year.
The York museum, which is preparing for the 50th anniversary commemoration of the wartime leader, said he was taken from Waterloo, London, to his final resting place in Oxfordshire.
A spokeswoman said David Monk Steel, from York, who worked as a clerk in an engineer’s office in 1965 and a keen spotter of steam locomotives, has told how he made tracks for Clapham Junction, where there were crowds of people gathering on the platform to see the funeral train pass by, with locomotive No. 34501 Winston Churchill at its head.
"The locomotive had three discs on the front in a ‘V’ formation, which I later discovered usually indicated a breakdown crane going to clear the line! On this occasion it signified Churchill’s ‘V’ for victory hand gesture."
Churchill’s Final Journey, from January 30 to May 3, will reunite the funeral train in the museum’s Great Hall.
The display will include archive footage of the funeral, which was televised to millions worldwide and will showcase the newly cosmetically restored locomotive No. 34051 Winston Churchill, part of the York museum’s collection
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