April 4, 2015

Finest Hour 133, Winter 2006-07

Page 8

SWANAGE, DORSET, AUGUST 31ST—A fundraising effort was launched yesterday to save the railway carriage that held Sir Winston Churchill’s body in his funeral train.

The former Southern Railways luggage van converted for the occasion in 1965 is languishing in a mock English station on a golf course in the U.S. Its owners WERE planning to break up the carriage but will donate it to Britain as long as someone pays the £40,000 needed to bring it from Los Angeles to the UK. The Swanage Railway Trust, Dorset, is leading the campaign. The carriage was taken to the U.S. by a Churchill enthusiast and moved to the golf course after his death. See “The Funeral Coach,” Finest Hour 129:6. Ivan Godfrey is the Railway Trust’s principal in this effort, and anyone interested may contact him: [email protected].