#funeral train

[ripplefactor]

Saying goodbye to Bobby—June 8, 1968—

Paul Fusco / Library of Congress, LOOK Magazine Collection, LC-L901A-68-3791 no. 55

[sixminutestoriesblog]

the London Necropolis

It was 1850 and London had a problem.

All right. London had a lot of problems in the 1850s. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, London had seen its population boom so quickly that the city didn't have time to make room for everyone. Housing developments and slums sprang up seemingly overnight, cramming as many people into a warren of rooms, and partitioned off rooms. as could be fit. Poverty ran rampant, cholera outbreaks swept through districts regularly, the conditions in the factories, where small children were often also employed, were deadly and the environment itself was a lung-clogging morass of soot and sewage. Some made their fortunes and managed to rise through the layers of society but many simply hung on to the bottom rungs of it for as long as they could before their hands were wrenched off to make way for others. And that didn't just apply to the living.

The dead didn't know rest either.

It didn't take long for the graveyards of London to hit full capacity with the population influx. Even with the body snatchers, working to retrieve bodies for local hospitals and schools as well as even more unsavory employers almost as soon as the grieving family left the plot, couldn't keep up with the massive amount of bodies that needed to be buried in the local cemeteries week after week, month after month, year after year. The problem grew to the point that gravediggers, hitting older coffins would simply continue digging, tossing rotted wood and whatever body parts were left into the dirt pile behind them, making room for the newest arrival in the plot. Graves got so shallow that the bare layer of dirt over them easily washed away and utterly failed to keep what was slowly decaying in the boxes covered. Church goers learned to bring perfume covered handkerchiefs to Sunday services, if they were lucky, to hold over their noses the entire time, trying to blot out the smell seeping under the doors and into the confined interiors of the buildings. Flies and other, even more unpleasant, scavengers were impossible to get rid of, lured by the ease of a quick meal and a place to take up residence. Health inspectors, and many Londoners of the time, blamed the miasma rising from the graveyards for many of the disease outbreaks that swept through the city. Something had to be done.

An amendment was passed in 1852 prohibiting most new burials in the more populous sections of London. The problem was - where did you put the bodies then?

In 1832, the Magnificent Seven, seven large plots of land outside London, had been remade into cemeteries. One business group had higher aspirations than that though. In 1854, the Brookwood Cemetery, the largest cemetery of the time, opened for business. It soon became know by a different name.

The London Necropolis.

And the London Necropolis Railway was there to make sure everyone, dead and alive, found safe transportation there.

Railroads and their trains were still new at that time. Loud and noisy, belching steam and smoke into the air, trains weren't seen as a dignified way for the dead to travel to their final resting place and eternal peace. Worse yet, travel by train might lead to a mixing of the classes, dead as well as living (gasps of alarm and swooning!). Who wanted their sweet genteel maiden aunt's body to ride in the same cargo car as some low level rake's corpse?! Why it was undignified (and very against the social divisions of the time)! Even in death, standards must be applied.

Trains, however noisy and undignified, did offer a distinct advantage. They were cheap. And they ran regularly on a schedule you could plan around, daily in fact, including Sundays. As for social distinctions - well, the LNC had a solution for that too. Depending on the money you were willing to spend, the rail offered first, second, and third class funerals, with separate train cars for each class, living or dead. Knowing that most passengers from other stations would be reluctant to ride a train that had carried dead bodies, the LNC bought new cars and engines specifically for the job, kept separate from the other routes of train travel. They laid track specifically for the job as well, so that only the necropolis trains traveled to one of the two separate stations in Brookwood Cemetery. Mourners left the Waterloo Station in London and road the train, with their unique luggage, to either the Southern Anglican Station or the Northern Station, where the 'nonconformist' section of the burial plots were. While the trains originally only ran for funerals, enough mourners wanted to return for visits to the graves of their loved ones and eventually, after about ten years, the LNC built a third station for that purpose. Almost immediately, a small hub of shops and services sprang up around the new station to cater to, and prey on, the arriving mourners. For fifty years, until 1900, the funeral trains ran on schedule, ferrying bodies, and their loved ones, back and forth between London and the Necropolis. Even after that time, the trains still ran 'as needed' until, finally, in 1941 the London Necropolis station was bombed during the London Blitz. It was the final blow to an already declining system. The station was never rebuilt.

By the 1950s, funeral trains were almost obsolete and the last one in England carried its lonely cargo in 1979. By 1988, the British Railway didn't carry coffins anymore. Time, and more efficient methods, had passed the Necropolis funeral trains by. The tracks overgrew with weeds where they weren't torn up for scrap and the only wistful train whistle left to linger in the chill evening air at the grey and abandoned gates was the long, low ghost of a memory.

[retropopcult]

On June 5, 1968, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president. His death, which occurred only two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., came as a terrible shock to the already grieving nation.

Three days later, a funeral train carried his coffin from New York to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery. Hundreds of thousands of people stood patiently in the searing heat as the train traveled slowly en route to Washington, DC. Paul Fusco, then a staff photographer for LOOK magazine, accompanied the train on its journey. The images he made reveal the respect that the American people—both rich and poor, Black and white—held for RFK, a man who had come to symbolize social justice and hope for a better tomorrow.

[aryburn-trains]

The RFK funeral train. North Brunswick, NJ June 08, 1968

[hagleyvault]

In the months leading up to the 1968 presidential election, the Democratic Party’s leading nominee was Robert F. Kennedy, whose advocacy for social justice issues, civil rights protections, and ending America’s involvement in the Vietnam War made him a popular favorite with low-income Americans, Latinos, African-Americans, and young voters. His candidacy was ended tragically, however, when he was assassinated on June 5, 1968.

Following a funeral mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City on June 8, his coffin embarked on a funeral train that carried his body to Washington D.C. for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. The train moved slowly to accommodate the crowds of an estimated 1 to 2 million mourners that lined up along the tracks to witness its passage. The 225-mile trip, which would typically be covered in around four hours, took eight hours to complete.

This photograph shows the 21-car funeral train, led by Penn Central Transportation Company GG1 electric locomotive number 4901, with number 4903 trailing, as it passed Wolfe Street in Baltimore, Maryland at 7:20 P.M. on this day in history in 1968.

This image is part of the Hagley Library’s recently acquired collection of Herbert H. Harwood, Jr. collection of railroad negatives (Accession 2019.212). The collection, which consists of nearly 150,000 images covering all of the twentieth century, is still being processed, but a selection of photographs has been digitized and made available in our Digital Archive. Click here to take a look.

[cadaverkelly]

[marmarinou]

Top: Abraham Lincoln's funeral train car

Bottom: The Lincoln funeral train on the trestle at the Lake Michigan shoreline

Chicago

1865

[deadpresidents]

George H.W. Bush Funeral Train

Union Pacific is honored to participate in the funeral procession for President George H.W. Bush. The funeral train leaves Union Pacific's Westfield Auto Facility Dec. 6 at 1 p.m. and should arrive at College Station across from Kyle Field at 3:25 p.m. The Westfield Auto Facility is not open to the public.

Before being buried at his Presidential Library on Thursday, the casket of George H.W. Bush will be transported by a special funeral train from Spring, Texas to College Station, Texas. This is the first Presidential funeral train since the death of President Eisenhower in 1969.