The presidential funeral train will be the first in nearly 50 years

The locomotive was painted to look like Air Force One, but George HW Bush joked that, if it had been the case during his presidency, he might have preferred to get on track rather than take the lead. # 39; air.

"I might have left the Air Force One behind," Bush launched at the unveiling of No. 4141 in 2005. Blue and gray locomotive commissioned in honor of the 41st President and unveiled at Texas A & M. University

On Thursday, this same machine will carry 4,300 horses and Bush's coffin, along with his family and close friends, for about 113 kilometers. ). The trip through five small towns in Texas was to last about two and a half hours. He will deliver the coffin of the Houston suburb to College Station.

There, a cortege will drive Bush to his presidential library at the university, where he will be buried at a private ceremony next to his wife, Barbara, who has passed away. in April, and her daughter Robin, who died at the age of 3, in 1953.

The sixth car of the train, a converted luggage carrier called "Council Bluffs", was provided with transparent sides to allow to the mourners to follow the path on Thursday The coffin draped with the flag of Bush.

This will be the eighth funeral train in the history of the United States and the first since Dwight D. Eisenhower's body left Washington's National Cathedral in seven US states to travel to his hometown of Washington. Abilene, Kansas, 49 years ago. The funeral train of Abraham Lincoln was the first, in 1865.

Robert F. Kennedy was never president, but he was running for the White House when he was murdered in Los Angeles in 1968. Her body was then transported to New York for a funeral mass and then taken by private train to Washington for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Thousands of mourners queued for the journey of more than 200 km

Originally, Union Pacific had ordered the locomotive bush to open an exhibition at the library presidential title "Trains: traces of the iron horse". This is one of the few times the company painted a locomotive of any color other than its traditional yellow. After a brief training session at the unveiling 13 years ago, at the 4141 inauguration, Bush took the engineer's seat and helped the locomotive make a 3-day tour. km.

"We have always rolled on the railroads and I have never forgotten it," Bush said at the time, remembering how he had taken the train and often slept on it, during trips like a child with his family. He also called the locomotive "Air Force One of the railways."

Bush, who died last week at his Houston home at the age of 94, was celebrated Wednesday at a funeral service at the cathedral. In the evening, his coffin was at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston.

The funeral train has been part of the official preparations for his death for years, said Bush spokesman Jim McGrath.

Federal government representatives contacted Union Pacific. in early 2009 and asked, at Bush's request, to provide a funeral train at some point, said company spokesman Tom Lange.

"We said:" Of course, we also have this locomotive that we would obviously like to be part of, "Lange said. He pointed out that trains were the means of transportation that led Bush to his naval service during the Second World War and then back home.

Eisenhower was the last president to travel regularly by train. One of the main reasons was his wife, Granny, who hated flying. During the 1952 campaign, Eisenhower traveled more than 51,000 kilometers and made 252 stops. And while he was flying often, his wife was still riding on the train, Union Pacific said.

Yet when Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis and won the presidency in 1988, both candidates used trains to make campaign stops. Bush also occasionally traveled by train in 1992, when he was defeated by Democrat Bill Clinton, including stopping in the Midwest aboard a train called "The Spirit of America".