Description
This Gauge 1 LSWR/London Necropolis Railway Coffin Van was built and painted by John Waggott and the J & M’s Team. The vehicle is number five of the limited run of six undertaken by J & M (information etched into underside of floor). The van is in excellent, little-used condition having had one previous owner. The wheelsets have steel tyres and compensation. Buffers and couplings are sprung.
The prototype vans ran on The LSWR Main Line as the London Necropolis Railway using the LSWR Main Line track from Westminster Bridge to Brockwood Cemetry near Woking from 13 November 1854 to 11 April 1941. Construction of the station facilities and the cemetry branch at Brockwood followed on from a particularly severe cholera epidemic in London during the period of 1948-49. The original trackwork facilities at Brockwood required locomotives to run down into the cemetry on a single East-facing track laid on a gravel bed with no run-around loop. An upgraded station and trackwork configuration was constructed in 1864 providing for the locomotive to be un-coupled at the cemetry entrance and a team of black horses to haul the carriages into and out of the cemetry back to the waiting locomotive.
