They’ve Stolen the Train!

• At the beginning of the 1960s, for many Londoners, life was impoverished and bleak. Postwar rationing was a distant memory, having ended only six years before.

• Ronald Christopher "Buster" Edwards, who had developed a taste for quick money by using his employment in a sausage factory to sell meat on the black market, was progressing to robberies with his friend Gordon Goody.

• Brian Field, a legal assistant, came into contact with them as a result of their legal run-ins.

  • His assistance went beyond just helping them build their defenses. Field would give the two information about his company's clients as potential targets in exchange for a cut of the profits.

• Field introduced them to a stranger he called "the Ulsterman" at the start of 1963.

  • This crooked Manchester postal worker, believed to be Belfast-born Patrick McKenna, brought intriguing news: large sums of money were being transported on overnight mail trains from Glasgow to London.

  • An enticing target is if Goody and Edwards' pay grade is higher.

  • They passed the information on to Bruce Richard Reynolds, an experienced South London criminal.

  • Reynolds formed an impromptu gang in the months that followed.

Best-Laid Plans

• The gang would stop the train in Buckinghamshire's open countryside at Sears Crossing, near the village of Ledburn, where a signal could be tampered with. While this was an ideal location for stopping the train, the high embankments made it unusable for unloading the loot.

  • The train would then be transferred to the close-by Bridego Bridge for that.

  • The mail train was typically lengthy, with up to 80 postal workers stationed in each car who spent the trip categorizing letters and packages.

• The gang planned to only uncouple the first two coaches after learning that High-Value Packages (HVPs) were kept in the second coach from the front.

  • When they arrived at Bridego Bridge, they could use a human chain to lower sacks of registered mail from a high embankment to a drop-side truck waiting on the road below.

• Reynolds wouldn't take any chances, so one of the group would spend months studying locomotive manuals in case the hijacked driver didn't comply with their demands.

  • He convinced a driver on a suburban line to take him along for a ride by pretending to be a teacher; by paying close attention, he learned some fundamentals. Reynolds made sure by hiring a driver with plenty of experience.

  • Field, in the meantime, arranged for the purchase of the deserted Leatherslade Farm, which would serve as their hideout following the robbery and was about 50 kilometers from Sears Crossing.

Signal Victory

• On August 7, 2013, the train departed Glasgow shortly before 7 o'clock with veteran driver Jack Mills at the wheel and David Whitby by his side.

  • Instead of the estimated £300,000 that the gang had been expecting due to the public holiday on the previous Monday, during which the banks had been closed, the HVP coach was carrying over £2.6 million in cash.

• By the time the train arrived at Sears Crossing, gang members had meddled with the signal lights, covering the green light with a glove and wiring the red "stop" sign to a separate battery.

  • Whitby went to investigate as Mills abruptly stopped the train. When he tried to call in from the trackside phone, he discovered that the wires had been severed.

• Whitby was thrown down the steep embankment by men in motorcycle helmets and ski masks as he made his way back toward the train.

  • As Mills was being struck unconscious with an iron bar by gang members wearing masks and gloves, the coaches were being detached from the back of the HVP coach, and the postal workers were being overpowered and handcuffed.

• The gang quickly realized that the replacement driver, a retired man they called "Stan Agate," was unable to operate the cutting-edge Class 40 diesel-electric locomotive.

  • The robbers had to revive Mills after they had knocked him out in order for him to lead them up the line to Bridego Bridge.

  • The gang quickly packed the lorry by passing the mailbags down the embankment in a human chain.

  • The gang triumphantly returned to the hideout at Leatherslade Farm, alerting the cuffed postal workers in the HVP coach not to contact the cops for 30 minutes.

An inevitable slip-up

• It was a "great train robbery," and if it all made it sound like something out of a movie, that's because such elaborately planned heists have become far more popular with filmmakers than with criminals in recent decades.

• These types of crimes are not only risky but also incredibly labor-intensive. Although some participants are still unknown to this day, the robbery appears to have involved up to 17 men. To avoid creating division and a potential source of danger, the gang members divided the loot equally.

• But a large number of participants in the operation came with risks, like a gang member being careless with his loot or discussing the robbery.

• In the end, a friend of the ringleaders who was in prison and hoping for a deal passed along some rumors he had heard through the grapevine, giving the investigators a crucial lead to follow.

The Plan unravels

• Confidence had given way to tension in the robbers' farmhouse in the meantime.

  • The initial plan had been to stay quiet for a week, but it soon became clear that the police, who had been methodically scouring the nearby countryside, were closing in.

  • Detectives had taken note of the robbers' 30-minute warning to the HVP coach's staff, which indicated a hiding place within a half-hour drive.

• Following a report of suspicious activity from a neighbor, police searched Leatherslade Farm.

  • The robbers had fled, but fingerprints were discovered on a ketchup bottle and a Monopoly game they had played with real money.

  • The conspiracy came to an abrupt and chaotic end, just as it had been patiently planned.

  • The robbers were swiftly apprehended collectively in south London, numbering 11.

• The majority of the 11 received 30-year sentences in prison, a harsh punishment for a crime in which no one was killed. However, it made people feel sorry for the robbers.

• In August 1964, gang member Charlie Wilson's friends broke into Birmingham's Winson Green Prison to kidnap him; the following July, Ronnie Biggs managed to climb over the wall at Wandsworth Prison in London.

Ronnie Biggs

• Ronnie Biggs protested against being referred to as the gang's "teaboy," but his involvement in the Great Train Robbery hardly qualifies as climactic.

• He was an unlucky burglar and armed robber when he met Bruce Reynolds in Wandsworth Prison. He was born in 1929 in Stockwell, south London.

• His first and only significant heist was to be The Great Train Robbery. His primary duty was to find "Stan Agate," the gang's replacement driver who was unable to actually move the train because he was unfamiliar with the make and model of the locomotive being used.

• At the gang's hideout, a ketchup bottle with Biggs' fingerprints on it led to his arrest three weeks later.

• On July 8, 1965, he used a rope ladder to escape Wandsworth Prison. He traveled to Australia and then Brussels before settling in Brazil in 1970, which did not yet have an extradition agreement with the UK.

• Eventually, The Sun newspaper paid for Biggs to fly back to the UK on a private jet in exchange for having exclusive rights to his story. On May 7, 2001, Biggs was detained shortly after touching down at RAF Northolt.

Related Crimes

• On May 15, 1855, a South Eastern Railway train traveling between London Bridge and Folkestone in the United Kingdom had about 91 kg of gold stolen from safes on board.

• On June 12, 1924, the Newton Gang robs a postal train near Rondout, Illinois, for approximately $3 million, making it the largest train robbery in history at the time.

• On March 31, 1976, members of the Irish Republican Socialist Party robbed a train traveling from Cork to Dublin, Ireland, near the village of Sallins.