President George H.W. Bush's Funeral Involves a Cadillac XTS Hearse and a Special Union Pacific Train
UPDATE 12/5/18: Every living U.S. president and many other dignitaries and officials appeared today at President Bush's service in the National Cathedral after the Cadillac XTS hearse proceeded across Pennsylvania Avenue carrying the casket of the former president.
When George H.W. Bush was president, his official state limousine was a Lincoln Town Car, but for more than two decades, Cadillacs have been the vehicles used to transport presidents. During this week of solemn ceremony accompanying the nation’s observance of the passing of the 41st President of the United States, who died at the age of 94 on November 30, he will be transported in a Cadillac XTS hearse bearing the presidential seal.
Funeral proceedings are now underway and involve all manner of methods of transportation other than the XTS hearse. A three-stage schedule of funeral ceremonies taking place in Texas and in Washington, D.C., also calls on Air Force One, renamed as Special Air Mission 41 for the occasion, and a Union Pacific train bearing Bush's name as he makes his way to his final resting place at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas.
The first funeral rail journey for a late president was in 1865, when the Lincoln Special carrying the body of the assassinated Abraham Lincoln traveled through seven states and some 1700 miles to his home in Illinois. It stopped regularly for public viewings and ceremonies and carried 300 people aboard-including the coffin of his son Willie, who had predeceased him. The Union Pacific train to carry Bush will be the #4141 George Bush Locomotive, custom painted in the colors that Air Force One used during Bush's years as president, and it will take the late president on a 70-mile journey across Texas to his final resting place on Thursday afternoon. Because the route has been made public, mourners are expected to line the tracks to pay their respects.
The memorial began Monday, December 3, in Houston, where a ceremony was held before the casket was loaded into the Cadillac XTS and taken to an airplane to be transported to Washington, D.C. The casket was taken to the U.S. Capitol, where the president lay in state in the Rotunda. Tomorrow, December 5, at 10 a.m., the president's remains will depart the Capitol for a procession to the funeral in Washington National Cathedral. A departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews will then take place before the casket is loaded back onto an aircraft and taken to Texas.
A Cadillac XTS hearse was also seen as part of funeral ceremonies for President Bush's wife, Barbara Bush, in April. Cadillacs have been official state cars ever since Bush's successor, Bill Clinton, took office in 1993. His Cadillac Fleetwood limousine was the first Cadillac designed from the ground up specifically to transport a president, while Bush's Lincoln Town Car limousine and the presidential cars before it were simply customized models built for the president. The current president's limousine is also a Cadillac.
('You Might Also Like',)
