The Great Train Robbery (Part I)

The Great Train Robbery was the robbery of £2.6 million from a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London on the West Coast Main Line in the early hours of 8 August 1963, at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England.

After tampering with the lineside signals in order to bring the train to a halt, a gang of 15, led by Bruce Reynolds, attacked the train. Other gang members included Gordon Goody, Buster Edwards, Charlie Wilson, Roy James, John Daly, Jimmy White, Ronnie Biggs, Tommy Wisbey, Jim Hussey, Bob Welch and Roger Cordrey, as well as three men known only as numbers "1", "2" and "3", two of which later turned out to be Harry Smith and Danny Pembroke. A 16th man, an unnamed retired train driver, was also present.

With careful planning based on inside information from an individual known as "The Ulsterman", named (possibly erroneously) as Patrick McKenna in 2014, the robbers escaped with over £2.6 million (equivalent to £55 million in 2019). The bulk of the stolen money was never recovered. Though the gang did not use any firearms, Jack Mills, the train driver, was beaten over the head with a metal bar. Mills was so severely injured that he didn't work again.

After the robbery, the gang hid at Leatherslade Farm. After the police found this hideout, incriminating evidence led to the eventual arrest and conviction of most of the gang. The ringleaders were sentenced to 30 years in jail.

Robbery

Planning

The plan to intercept and rob the overnight Glasgow to London mail train was based on information from an unnamed senior security officer within Royal Mail who had detailed knowledge of the amounts of money carried; he was introduced to two of the criminals who would carry out the raid—Gordon Goody and Buster Edwards—by a London solicitor's clerk, Brian Field.

The raid was devised over a period of months by a core team: Goody and Edwards along with Bruce Reynolds, and Charlie Wilson, with Reynolds assuming the role of "mastermind". This gang, although very successful in the criminal underworld, had virtually no experience in stopping and robbing trains, so it was agreed to enlist the help of another London gang called The South Coast Raiders. This group included Tommy Wisbey, Bob Welch, and Jim Hussey, who were already 'accomplished train robbers'. This group also included Roger Cordrey, a man who was a specialist in this field and knew how to rig the track-side signals to stop the train.

Other associates (including Ronnie Biggs, a man Reynolds had previously met in jail) were added as the organization evolved. The final gang who took part in the raid comprised a total of 16 men.

Royal Mail train

At 18:50 on Wednesday 7 August 1963, the travelling post office (TPO) "Up Special" train set off from Glasgow Central station en route to Euston Station in London. It was scheduled to arrive at Euston at 03:59 the following morning. The train was hauled by English Electric Type 4 (later Class 40) diesel-electric locomotive D326 (later 40 126). The train consisted of 12 carriages and carried 72 Post Office staff who sorted mail during the journey.

Mail was loaded onto the train at Glasgow, during additional station stops en route, and from line-side collection points where local post office staff would hang mail sacks on elevated track-side hooks that were caught by nets deployed by the on-board staff. Sorted mail on the train could be dropped off at the same time. This process of exchange allowed mail to be distributed locally without delaying the train with unnecessary stops. One of the carriages involved in the robbery is preserved at the Nene Valley Railway.

The second carriage, behind the engine, was known as the HVP (high-value packages) coach, which carried large quantities of money and registered mail for sorting. Usually the value of the shipment was in the region of £300,000, but because the previous weekend had been a UK Bank Holiday weekend, the total on the day of the robbery was to be between £2.5 and £3 million.

In 1960, the Post Office Investigation Branch (IB) recommended the fitting of alarms to all TPOs with HVP carriages. This recommendation was implemented in 1961, but HVP carriages without alarms were retained in reserve. By August 1963, three HVP carriages were equipped with alarms, bars over the windows and bolts and catches on the doors, but at the time of the robbery, these carriages were out of service, so a reserve carriage (M30204M) without those features had to be used. The fitting of radios was also considered, but they were deemed to be too expensive, and the measure was not implemented.  This carriage was kept for evidence for seven years following the event and then burned at a scrapyard in Norfolk in the presence of police and post office officials to deter any souvenir hunters.

Stopping the train

Just after 03:00 on 8 August, the driver, 58-year-old Jack Mills from Crewe, stopped the train on the West Coast Main Line at a red signal light at Sears Crossing, Ledburn, between Leighton Buzzard and Cheddington. The signal had been tampered with by the robbers: they had covered the green light and connected a battery to power the red light. The locomotive's second crew member, known as the secondman or "fireman", was 26-year-old David Whitby, also from Crewe. As a signal stop was unexpected at this time and place, Whitby climbed down from the cab to call the signalman from a line-side telephone, only to find the cables had been cut. As he returned to the train he was overpowered by one of the robbers. Meanwhile, gang members entered the engine cabin from both sides, and as Mills grappled with one robber he was struck from behind by another with a cosh and rendered semi-conscious.

The robbers now had to move the train to Bridego Bridge (now known as Mentmore Bridge), approximately half a mile (800 m) further along the track, where they planned to unload the money. One of the robbers had spent months befriending railway staff and familiarizing himself with the layout and operation of trains and carriages. Ultimately though, it was decided that it would be better to use an experienced train driver to move the locomotive and the first two carriages from the signals to the bridge after uncoupling the carriages containing the rest of the sorters and the ordinary mail.

On that night, the gang's hired train driver (an acquaintance of Ronnie Biggs, later referred to as "Stan Agate" or "Peter") was unable to operate this newer type of locomotive; although having driven trains for many years, he was by then retired and was experienced only on shunting (switching) locomotives on the Southern Region. With no other alternative available to them, it was quickly decided that Mills would have to move the train to the stopping point near the bridge, which was indicated by a white sheet stretched between poles on the track. Biggs's only task was to supervise Agate's participation in the robbery, and when it became obvious that Agate was not able to drive the train, he and Biggs were sent to the waiting truck to help load the mail bags.

Removing the money

The train was stopped at Bridego Bridge, and the robbers' "assault force" attacked the 'high-value packages' (HVP) carriage. Frank Dewhurst was in charge of the three other postal workers (Leslie Penn, Joseph Ware and John O'Connor) in the HVP carriage. Thomas Kett, assistant inspector in charge of the train from Carlisle to Euston was also in the carriage. Dewhurst and Kett were hit with coshes when they made a vain attempt to prevent the robbers' storming of the carriage. Once the robbers had entered the carriage, the staff could put up no effective resistance and there was no police officer or security guard on board to assist them. The staff was made to lie face down on the floor in a corner of the carriage. Mills and Whitby were then brought into the carriage, handcuffed together and put down beside the staff.

The robbers removed all but eight of the 128 sacks from the HVP carriage, which they transferred in about 15–20 minutes to the waiting truck by forming a human chain. The gang departed in their Austin Loadstar truck some 30 minutes after the robbery had begun and, in an effort to mislead any potential witnesses, they used two Land Rover vehicles, both of which bore the registration plates BMG 757A.

The gang then headed along minor roads, listening for police broadcasts on a VHF radio, the journey taking somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour, and arrived back at Leatherslade Farm at around 04:30, at around the same time as the first reports of the crime were being made. Leatherslade was a run-down farm 27 miles (43 km) from the crime scene, between Oakley and Brill (51°48′23″N 1°3′11″W). It had been bought two months earlier as their hideout.

At the farm they counted the proceeds and divided it into 16 full shares and several 'drinks' (smaller sums of money intended for associates of the gang). The precise amounts of the split differ according to the source, but the full shares came to approximately £150,000 each (equivalent to about £3 million in 2019).

From listening to their police-tuned radio, the gang learned that the police had calculated they had gone to ground within a 30-mile radius of the crime scene rather than dispersing with their haul. This declaration was based on information given by a witness at the crime scene who stated that a gang member had told the post office workers "not to move for half an hour". The press interpreted this information as a 30-mile (48 km) radius—a half-hour drive in a fast car.

The gang realized the police were using a "dragnet tactic", and with help from the public, would probably discover the farm much sooner than had been originally anticipated. As a result, the plan for leaving the farm was brought forward to Friday from Sunday (the crime was committed on Thursday). The vehicles they had driven to the farm could no longer be used because they had been seen by the train staff. Brian Field came to the farm on Thursday to pick up his share of the loot and to take Roy James to London to find an extra vehicle. Bruce Reynolds and John Daly picked up cars, one for Jimmy White and the other for Reynolds, Daly, Biggs and the replacement train driver. Field, his wife Karin and his associate "Mark" brought the vans and drove the remainder of the gang to the Fields's home to recover.

Field had arranged with "Mark" to carry out a comprehensive clean-up and set fire to the farm after the robbers had left, even though the robbers had already spent much time wiping the place down to be free of prints. According to Buster Edwards, he 'nicked' £10,000 in ten-shilling notes to help pay "Mark's" drink. However, on Monday, when Charlie Wilson rang Brian Field to check whether the farm had been cleaned, he did not believe Field's assurances. He called a meeting with Edwards, Reynolds, Daly and James and they agreed that they needed to be sure. They called Field to a meeting on Tuesday, where he was forced to admit that he had failed to "torch" the farm. In the IVS 2012 documentary film The Great Train Robbery, Nick Reynolds (son of Bruce Reynolds) said "...the guy who was paid to basically go back to the farm and burn it down did a runner."  Wilson would have killed Field there and then but was restrained by the others. By the time they were ready to go back to the farm, however, they learned that police had found the hide-out.

The money

There is some uncertainty regarding the exact cash total stolen from the train. £2,631,684 is a figure quoted in the press, although the police investigation states the theft as £2,595,997 10s, in 636 packages, contained in 120 mailbags—the bulk of the haul in £1 and £5 notes (both the older white note and the newer blue note, which was half its size). There were also ten-shilling notes and Irish and Scottish money. Because a 30-minute time limit had been set by Reynolds, eight out of 128 bags were not stolen and were left behind. Statistically, this could have amounted to £131,000 or 4.7% of the total.  It is alleged that the total weight of the bags removed was 2.5 long tons (2.5 t), according to former Buckinghamshire Police Officer John Woolley.

Famously, the gang had used the money in a game of Monopoly while holed up at the farm house.

Raising the alarm

The robbers had cut all the telephone lines in the vicinity, but one of the rail-men left on the train at Sears Crossing caught a passing goods train to Cheddington, where he raised the alarm at around 04:20. The first reports of the robbery were broadcast on the VHF police radio within a few minutes and this is where the gang heard the line "A robbery has been committed and you'll never believe it – they've stolen the train!"

Robbers and accomplices

The gang consisted of 17 full members who were to receive an equal share, including the men who were at the robbery and two key informants.

The gang that carried out the robbery consisted of 15 criminals predominantly from south London: Gordon Goody, Charlie Wilson, Buster Edwards, Bruce Reynolds, Roy James, John Daly, Roger Cordrey, Jimmy White, Bob Welch, Tommy Wisbey, Jim Hussey, and Ronnie Biggs, as well as Harry Smith and Danny Pembroke, who were never charged due to the lack of evidence against them, and one still unknown, plus the train driver they nicknamed "Pop". The best known member of the gang, Biggs, had only a minor role—to recruit the train driver.

The robbers

Bruce Reynolds

Bruce Richard Reynolds was born on 7 September 1931 at Charing Cross Hospital, Strand, London, to Thomas Richard and Dorothy Margaret (née Keen). His mother died in 1935, and he had trouble living with his father and stepmother, so he often stayed with one or other of his grandmothers. Reynolds was jailed for three years on several counts of breaking and entering, and upon his release quickly started re-offending. He soon joined a gang with best friend John Daly (future brother-in-law). They were mentored by South Western gang leaders Ernie Watts and Terry Hogan (a.k.a. Harry Booth). Also he did some criminal work with Jimmy White and met Buster Edwards at Charlie Richardson's club. Richardson in turn introduced him to Gordon Goody.

After the train heist, Reynolds escaped to Mexico with his wife, Angela, and young son, Nick Reynolds (who later became a member of the band Alabama 3, whose song "Woke Up This Morning" was the opening theme of The Sopranos) and lived lavishly with his share of the take, approximately 150,000 British pounds. When that money ran out, Reynolds moved his family to Canada and then France under false identities, in search of work, before returning to the United Kingdom to pursue opportunities promised by his old criminal contacts. He was arrested in 1968 in Torquay and sentenced to 25 years in jail. He was released a decade later.

Reynolds was reincarcerated in the mid-1980s for dealing amphetamines.  He has produced occasional journalism pieces, been a consultant on movie and book projects about the train heist, and published a well-regarded crime memoir, Crossing the Line: The Autobiography of a Thief (1995).

In a 2003 interview, Reynolds recalled: "from an early age I always wanted a life of adventure." He was rejected by the Royal Navy because of poor eyesight, and then tried to become a foreign correspondent, but his highest achievement in that vein was to become a clerk at the Daily Mail. While his life in crime did provide excitement, Reynolds said in 2003, "I've always felt that I can't escape my past. And in many ways I feel that it is like a line from the 'Ancient Mariner' and that the notoriety was like an albatross around my neck.”

Reynolds died aged 81 on 28 February 2013 after a brief illness. He is survived by his son Nick.

Douglas Gordon Goody

Authorities regarded Douglas Gordon Goody as the mastermind of the operation.  He first made contact with 'The Ulsterman' in a meeting set up by Brian Field in Finsbury Park. Of Northern Irish descent, Goody was born in Putney, London in March 1930 and was still living there in his mother's flat at the time of the robbery. In the early 1960s he joined Buster Edwards' gang and helped rob various easy targets.

After his release from prison in 1975, Goody moved to the white-washed town of Mojácar in Almería, Spain, where he ran the Chiringuito Kon Tiki beachfront bar. In September 2014, Goody claimed the identity of 'The Ulsterman' was Patrick McKenna for the first time in a documentary marking the 50th anniversary of the robbery.  The documentary makers employed Ariel Bruce, a social worker who finds missing family members, to trace McKenna, who was found to have died some years previously. However Bruce was able to make contact with McKenna's family. This documentary was shown in cinemas and on demand in October 2014. On 29 January 2016, Goody died of emphysema at the age of 85.

Charles Frederick (Charlie) Wilson

The most dangerous of the Great Train Robbers was 'the Silent Man' Charlie Wilson. He was born on 30 June 1932 to Bill and Mabel Wilson in Battersea. His friends from childhood were Jimmy Hussey, Tommy Wisbey, Bruce Reynolds and Gordon Goody. Later on, he met Ronald 'Buster' Edwards and the young driving enthusiasts Mickey Ball and Roy James, who had taken up car theft. From 1948 to 1950 he was called up for national service, and in 1955 he married Patricia (Pat) Osbourne, with whom he had three children. He turned to crime early in life and spurned his father's legitimate but low-income wage. While he did have legitimate work in his in-laws' grocer's shop, he also was a thief and his criminal proceeds went into buying shares in various gambling enterprises. He went to jail for short spells for numerous offenses. In 1960, he began to work with Bruce Reynolds and planned to get into the criminal big league.

Ronald "Buster" Edwards

Ronald Christopher Edwards was born on 27 January 1932 at Lambeth, London, the son of a barman. After leaving school, he worked in a sausage factory, where he began his criminal career by stealing meat to sell on the post-war black market. During his national service in the RAF he was detained for stealing cigarettes. When he returned to South London, he ran a drinking club and became a professional criminal. He married June Rose in 1952. They had a daughter, Nicky.  In his final years he ran a flower stall outside Waterloo station in London.

Brian Field

Brian Arthur Field was born on 15 December 1934 and was immediately put up for adoption. He served two years in the Royal Army Service Corps, seeing service during the Korean War. Although soldiers in the Service Corps were considered combat personnel, they were primarily associated with transport and logistics. When he was discharged from the military, it was with "a very good character".

Field later became a solicitor's managing clerk for John Wheater & Co. Although he was only 28 at the time of the robbery, he was already apparently more prosperous than his boss, John Wheater. Field drove a new Jaguar and had a house, "Kabri" (an amalgam of Karin and Brian [Field]), with his wife at the Bridle Path, Whitchurch Hill, Oxfordshire, while his boss owned a battered Ford and lived in a run-down neighborhood. Part of the reason for Field's prosperity was that he was not averse to giving Goody and Edwards information about what his clients had in their country houses, making them prime targets for the thieves.  On one occasion he described the contents and layout of a house near Weybridge where his wife Karin had once been a nanny.

Prior to the robbery Field had represented Buster Edwards and Gordon Goody. He had arranged Edwards' defense when he had been caught with a stolen car and had met Goody at a nightclub in Soho. Field was called upon to assist in Goody's defense in the aftermath of the "Airport Job", which was a robbery carried out on 27 November 1962 at BOAC Comet House, Hatton Cross, London Airport. This was the big practice robbery that the South West Gang had done before the Great Train Robbery.  Field was successful in arranging bail for Goody and Charlie Wilson.

"The Ulsterman"

In 2014, Douglas Goody claimed to journalists that "The Ulsterman" was Patrick McKenna, at the time of the robbery a 43-year-old postal worker living in Salford, Lancashire. McKenna, who was originally from Belfast, met Goody four times in 1963. Goody alleged that he found out McKenna's name only when he saw it written inside his spectacles case.

It is not known what became of the share McKenna allegedly received, but his children were "flabbergasted" on hearing the claim of their father's involvement. It was surmised that McKenna either donated his share to the Catholic Church over the years or had had the money stolen from him.

This alleged identification of McKenna as "The Ulsterman" has been disputed; not least because McKenna appears to have had no criminal record or associations and died poor. It has been suggested that a known associate of the convicted robbers, Sammy Osterman, was part of the gang, and his "Ulsterman" soubriquet was simply the result of mishearing his surname.