Final Journey

This new history reveals the previously untold story of why and how trains have been used to transport the dead, enabling their burial in a place of significance to the bereaved. Profusely illustrated with many images, some never previously published, Nicolas Wheatley's work details how the mainline railways carried out this important yet often hidden work from the Victorian age to the 1980s, as well as how ceremonial funeral transport continues on heritage railways today. From royalty, aristocrats and other VIPs (including Sir Winston Churchill and the Unknown Warrior) to victims of accidents and ordinary people, Final Journey explores the way in which these people travelled for the last time by train before being laid to rest.

NICOLAS WHEATLEY is a retired solicitor, with two law degrees, as well as a Masters in in 'Death and Society' from the University of Bath. He has written a number of articles on funeral trains and has always been steeped in the world of, having had two great-grandfathers who worked on the railways. He is a working volunteer on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway. And lives in Cheltenham.