Queen Elizabeth to make rare public speech

London: Queen Elizabeth is expected to make a rare public speech thanking her British and Commonwealth subjects for 63 years of support when she becomes the counrty`s longest-reigning monarch on September 9.

She will speak at the conclusion of her journey aboard a steam train and is likely to pay tribute to her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, whose record reign she will overtake, The Telegraph reported.

The Queen, 89, will board a train at Edinburgh Waverley Station pulled by the steam locomotive Union of South Africa for the two-hour journey.

It will stop at Newtongrange in Midlothian, where the Queen will unveil a plaque, before reaching Tweedbank, where the Queen will officially open the Borders Railway, the longest domestic railway line to be built in Britain in over a century.

The queen has also given permission for 24-hour news TV cameras to broadcast live from the garden of Buckingham Palace for the first time on Wednesday.

Queen Elizabeth assumed the throne on February 6, 1952. /IANS