国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush laid to rest in Texas_时事

国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush laid to rest in Texas

HOUSTON, Dec. 6 -- In a drizzling rain, former U.S. President George H.W. Bush was buried Thursday at his family plot behind the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University.

Closed to media, the Bush family privately laid their loved one to rest alongside Barbara Bush, the former president's wife of 73 years, and Robin Bush, the daughter they lost to leukemia at the age of three.

The final journey of the 41st president was taken by a Union Pacific locomotive 4141 which carried his body from Houston to the burial site.

With the presidential seal and the words "George Bush 41 Presidential Library and Museum" printed along its side, the two-locomotive, 11-car train was painted with sleek lines in blue, gray and white, to evoke Air Force One.

It was specially designed in Bush's honor by Union Pacific and was unveiled near his library as part of an exhibition in 2005. It has been at work across the country since then.

During the two-and-half-hour ride, the train was welcomed by thousands of people along the rail tracks, paying respects to the late president and experiencing history. Tears in eyes and flags in hands, people were waving and taking photos when the train whistled, slowly passing by.

It was Bush himself who decided to take his final journey on a train. The procession falls in line with a long history of U.S. presidential funeral trains that transported the bodies to their places of burial, according to Union Pacific. They included Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower.