Churchill's Final Journey

This Friday (January 30th 2015) marks the 50th anniversary of the state funeral of Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century.

Sir Winston Churchill died on 24 January 1965, aged 90, ten days after suffering a stroke. As a reflection of his international renown, and leadership of Britain through World War II he was granted a state funeral by decree of the Queen, the first commoner to be honoured in this way since Gladstone in 1898. The funeral was the largest state funeral in history at the time, attended by leaders from 112 countries in addition to the Queen.

Thousands lined the streets of London to witness the passage of the funeral cortège from Westminster Hall, where his body lay in state for three days, to St Paul's Cathedral. Twenty five million people in the UK watched the funeral on television, the film below shows the original Pathé Newsreel of the day.

Following the funeral, the coffin was taken to Waterloo Station for its final journey by rail to Handborough in Oxfordshire, and then by road to Bladon where Churchill was buried in the family plot at St Martin's Church alongside his mother and father.

Click here to see the archive BBC coverage of the coffin's journey down the Thames to Waterloo Station.

The funeral train of Pullman coaches was hauled by Battle of Britain class locomotive 34051 "Winston Churchill", with the coffin carried in a specially prepared and painted former Southern Railway parcel van S2464S - thousands stood in silence at stations and fields along the route to pay their last respects.

Click the image below to view an article from the March 1965 issue of The Railway Magazine, which documents the journey of the funeral train.

Southern Railway van S2464S is now owned by the Swanage Railway Trust, and has been restored at the National Railway Museum in Shildon. The van is now on display at a special exhibition at the National Railway Museum, York until 3 May 2015, reunited for the first time since the funeral with Locomotive No. 34051 "Winston Churchill" and the Pullman carriage "Lydia".

A limited edition train pack of this historic train will be available later this year, and can be pre-ordered now on Hornby.com.