AUGUST 8, 1963 Audacious but violent and foiled so was train robbery really so great?
Jack Mills was struck with an iron bar before he knew what was happening.
The train driver had boarded the London-bound train at the change-over at Crewe, his hometown, with no idea that he was about to become an unwilling part of the most famous robbery in British history.
Hours earlier, the Travelling Post Office train had departed Glasgow Central at approximately 6.50pm. The second of the carriages was the High Value Package carriage, where usually there would be around £300,000 in cash, but because it had been a bank holiday the preceding weekend, there was around £2.6 million.
It was about 3am when the train passed Leighton Buzzard and 58-year-old Mills saw a red signal up ahead at Sears Crossing. This was unexpected, so, after bringing the train to a halt, the locomotive’s second crew member, David Whitby, climbed down in order to call the signalman from the line-side telephone, only to discover the cable was cut.
The signal’s green light had been covered and a battery pack connected to power the red light. It was all part of a meticulouslyplanned heist organised by a gang of 15, who at that moment swooped on the stationary locomotive.
As Whitby tried to return to the train he was overpowered, while Mills bravely wrestled with a thief before he was hit with a metal bar and left semi-conscious.
The Great Train Robbery had commenced, and the gang set to work on uncoupling most of the carriages, leaving just the valuables-filled first two carriages. The steep embankments nearby weren’t conducive to a speedy getaway, so the plan was for one of the gang, who had rail experience, to drive the carriages a half mile further down the track to Bridego Bridge, where two Land Rovers were waiting to speed the money off to a remote farmhouse hideout.
But he had never driven a locomotive of this size before, so a woozy and terrified Mills was roused by Ronnie Biggs. At Bridego Bridge, a human chain was formed to swiftly and effectively remove 120 of the 128 bags containing two and a half tons of mostly £1 and £5 notes. One of the gang ordered train staff to stay still for 30 minutes before contacting police, which led detectives, upon hearing this, to determine the hideout was within a 30-mile drive of the scene.
As the robbers sped to Leatherslade Farm, where they would hide out and play Monopoly with the cash, they listened to police radio and heard the line: “A robbery has been committed and you’ll never believe it – they’ve stolen
The Great Train Robbers in the act in a scene from the 1988 British movie Buster based on the heist
the train!”While much of the money was never recovered, prints left at the hideout led detectives to eventually track down most of the gang members.
Organiser Bruce Reynolds was arrested in 1968, having returned to the UK after running out of money while on the run in France and Canada. Ronnie Biggs, who escaped prison after just 15 months and went on the run, eventually landing in Brazil where he spent several decades, returned to England amid ill health in 2001. He served a further eight years of his sentence before being released on compassionate grounds.
The robbery has been the subject of a number of books, TV series and films, including Buster, the 1988 movie starring Phil Collins as gang member Ronald Buster Edwards.