Winston Churchill's Funeral Train Returns Home‏

Return journey for Churchill's funeral train.

Photos courtesy: Swanage Railway Trust

(SOUTHAMPTON, England) - A railway funeral van used to carry Sir Winston Churchill to his final resting place has been returned to the UK by Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics.

The historic van was shipped to Southampton from Port Hueneme, near Los Angeles, where it formed part of a mock English railway station at a Californian resort.

The van will be restored in Somerset and The Swanage Railway Trust will provide a new home for it in Dorset, West of England.

Built in 1931, the South Railway Parcels and luggage van has travelled 8,000 miles (12,800 kms) on a six-week journey via the Panama Canal on board Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics' ship MV Tamberlane from Long Beach, California, United States.

On January 30th 1965, the funeral van formed part of the wartime leader's from London Waterloo to Oxfordshire. Later that year the van was saved from the scrap heap by the late Darius Johnson of the City of Industry, Los Angeles.

In 2006, following an approach by the Swanage Railway Trust, the historic van was kindly offered to the Trust by the City of Industry, Mayor David Perez, as 'a gift to the British people'.

A glance inside the British railway van that was saved from destruction

The Churchill Project appeal to save a very special piece of British railway history was the idea of Steve Doughty, Deputy Chairman of the Swanage Railway Trust, which runs the Swanage Railway.

The Southern Railway van number S24645 was painted in Pullman livery in 1962 and stored until Winston Churchill's death in 1965.

It formed part of the train which carried the coffin on its final journey to Bladon, near Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, England, after his state funeral.

The funeral train was hauled by the locomotive that bore his name, a Southern Railway streamlined Bulleid Pacific, now in the National Railway Museum in York, North Yorkshire, England.

Source: Swanage Railway Trust