WWI heroes' carriage is restored in Tenterden
- Published
A newly-restored train carriage has been unveiled in Kent 90 years after it carried the body of the Unknown Soldier to Westminster Abbey.
The Kent and East Sussex Railway raised £35,000 to restore The South Eastern and Chatham Railway train carriage.
In November 1920, it conveyed the remains of one of World War I's highest profile casualties.
The Unknown Warrior is buried in Westminster Abbey as a memorial to the dead of World War I.
The railway, which runs from Tenterden, in Kent, to Bodiam, in East Sussex, unveiled the carriage at a ceremony on Wednesday.
Cavell Van
The train also carried the bodies of nurse Edith Cavell and merchant seaman Captain Charles Fryatt from Dover to London following their arrival from Europe.
The first journey was made in May 1919 with the body of Edith Cavell.
She had helped Allied soldiers escape from the Germans before she was arrested and then shot on 12 October 1915 for "assisting the enemy".
Thereafter, the carriage became known to railwaymen as the Cavell Van.
Two months after her repatriation, it carried the remains of merchant seaman Captain Charles Fryatt, who was shot after his vessel attempted to ram U-boat U33 in March 1915, instead of stopping, as ordered.
The carriage arrived on the Kent and East Sussex Railway in 2004.