SIXTY years ago this month as a schoolboy I huddled on London’s freezing Strand with my father to witness Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral cortege. No sooner than the gun carriage bearing his coffin had passed by, I rushed to Clapham Junction to see the funeral train on its way from Waterloo to the Churchill family home in Oxfordshire, hauled by the magnificent “Battle of Britain” class locomotive No. 34051 “Sir Winston Churchill”.
I snapped this pic of the train at speed with my trusty Brownie 127 film camera. No award winner, but I am proud of it as it marked a historic moment in my life that I have never forgotten. Like the eponymous war leader, No. 34051 now rests in peace – in the care of the National Railway Museum.
