A restored locomotive that pulled Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral train and its carriages are being restored for the 50th anniversary of Sir Winston’s funeral on 30 January.

The 34051 Winston Churchill, along with the Southern Railway’s parcel van S2464S, which carried the coffin, transported the former Prime Minister from Waterloo in central London to his final resting place in Long Hanborough, Oxfordshire.

The carriage is being restored in Shildon, County Durham, having been loaned to the National Railway Museum by the Swanage Railway Trust in Dorset.

The train will go on display in the Great Hall of the National Railway Museum in York as part of its Churchill’s Final Journey exhibition.

Mid-Hants Railway chairman Colin Chambers said: “All that remains is some additional varnish applied by our team of painters. It is planned to be on its way to York by mid-January.”

Sir Winston was laid to rest in the parish churchyard of Bladon, close to Blenheim Palace where he was born 89 years earlier.