London's Necropolis Railroad

Imagine a railroad where the customers never spoke, never complained about being late and only traveled one way.  A railroad that offered three classes of service and had only one destination.

Such a railroad was the London Necropolis Railroad:  a train for the dead.

By 1850, London’s population had doubled to one million inhabitants in just 50 years and the city had run out of burial grounds in local church yards.  Public health required that something be done about disposing of the dead, and a cholera outbreak in 1849 hastened the decision.

Two entrepreneurs, Sir Richard Broun and Richard Sprye, proposed opening a giant cemetery 23 miles outside of the city which would have enough room for 5.8 million graves.  The challenge was… how to get the coffins and the mourners to the site.  The solution was a purpose-built railroad offering a package deal.

Family members could buy their deceased a first, second or third class ticket non-stop from the LNR’s London station (near Waterloo) straight to the magnificent Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.  A first class ticket included choice of burial plots, transportation of the deceased and family members (they went round-trip) and the right to erect a marker on the grave.  Second class tickets meant your grave could be re-used and third class passage was for paupers with no markers.

The station’s Waterloo location, close to the River Thames, was chosen to make it easy for funeral homes to deliver their clients to the LNR by boat as well as hearse.  Coffins were received and stored on the trains separate from the mourners, by ticket class and religion.  Each class had its own waiting room at the station, as well.

The train carriages were nothing special, though after continual use for 40 years there were some complaints about their condition.

The train departed London each morning at 11:35 am (11:20 am on Sundays) and would arrive at Brookwood 50 minutes later.  Return trains (for the mourners) departed each afternoon at 2:30 following services.

The railroad negotiated the right to run up to three roundtrips daily if there was demand.  And on the occasion of at least one celebrity’s funeral, the LNR once carried 5000 passengers on three separate trains, one of them 17 carriages long.

But business wasn’t always this brisk… or profitable.  Because fares were set by law and didn’t change for 85 years, the funeral goers were getting a much cheaper ride than commuters along the same route.  In fact, golfers would sometimes disguise themselves as mourners and use the cheap fares to get them to the links adjacent to the cemetery.

By the start of the 20^th century the motorized hearse had been invented and by the 1920’s the train seemed obsolete.  Also, given the distance of Brookwood from the city, it became a less desirable place for internment as family members didn’t like to travel that distance just to visit graveside.

The end came during World War II.  During the 1941 Blitz the London terminal took a direct hit and the railroad, by then running just two or three times a week, ceased operations.

The Brookwood Cemetery continues operations and is still the UK’s largest, including a 4.5 acre section dedicated to graves of thousands of American servicemen who died in the world wars.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media