London Necropolis railway station

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The London Necropolis railway station was a special railway station constructed by the London Necropolis Company for funeral trains, specifically to serve their Brookwood Cemetery.

Opened on 13 November 1854 just outside London's Waterloo station on the London and South Western Railway, three-carriage trains took coffins and mourners from the station — located between York Street (now Leake Street) and Westminster Bridge Road – directly to platforms within the cemetery. The station was rebuilt at 121 Westminster Bridge Road in 1902 when the mainline station was reconstructed.

Prior to 1900 funeral trains usually ran once each day but after this only operated "as required" until by the mid-1930s they only ran twice each week; much of their traffic having moved to the road network. On the night of 16 April 1941 the station was hit by bombs and never rebuilt or re-opened. However, the entrance to the station still stands in Westminster Bridge Road.

The station and cemetery is fictionalised in the book The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin.

References

• Clarke, J.M., (1995), The Brookwood Necropolis Railway, Locomotion Papers No. 143, The Oakwood Press, ISBN 0-85361-471-7

Fiction

• The Necropolis Railway, Faber and Faber, Martin, A., 2003, ISBN 0-571-20991-2

See also

• A service ran from a funeral station at King's Cross, on Rufford Street to the north of the main station , to the Great Northern London Cemetery in New Southgate between 1861 and 1865

• Rookwood Cemetery railway line, Sydney

External links

• Brookwood Cemetery Society – The Brookwood Cemetery Railway (history)

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Last updated on Wednesday January 02, 2008 at 15:47:02 PST (GMT -0800)
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