33
Bridego Bridge. The mail train was
typically long, its cars manned by
up to 80 postal workers who spent
the journey sorting letters and
packages. The gang discovered
that High-Value Packages (HVPs)
were stored in the second coach
from the front, so the gang planned
to uncouple just the first two
coaches. Once they reached
Bridego Bridge, they could unload
sacks of registered mail using a
human chain from the high
embankment to a drop-side lorry
waiting on the road below.
Reynolds refused to leave
anything to chance, so in case the
hijacked driver refused to carry out
their demands, one of the gang
would spend months studying
locomotive manuals. Posing as a
schoolteacher, he persuaded a
driver on a suburban line to take
him along for a ride: watching
closely, he picked up certain basics.
Reynolds also recruited a fully
experienced driver to make sure.
Field, meanwhile, negotiated the
purchase of the abandoned
Leatherslade Farm, roughly
50 km (30 miles) from Sears
Crossing, which would be their
hideout after the robbery.Signal victory
Just before 7pm on Wednesday,
7 August, the train left Glasgow,
with veteran driver Jack Mills at
the controls and his co-driver David
Whitby beside him. The HVP coach
was carrying over £2.6 million
(about £49 million today) in cashrather than the £300,000 or so the
gang had been expecting because
of the public holiday on the
previous Monday, during which
the banks had been closed.
By the time the train reached
Sears Crossing, gang members
had tampered with the signal
lights; they slipped a glove over the
green light to blot it out and wired
the red “stop” sign to a separateSee also: The James–Younger Gang 24–25 ■ The Wild Bunch 150–51BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS
The train was halted just before
Bridego Bridge where the gang formed
a human chain down the embankment.
They loaded the loot onto a lorry where
the black car is in the image.battery. A surprised Mills brought
the train to a halt and Whitby
went to investigate. When he tried
to report in from the trackside
telephone, he found that the wires
had been cut.
As Whitby made his way back
towards the train, he was hurled
down the steep embankment by
men in motorcycle helmets and ski
masks. Meanwhile, gang members
wearing masks and gloves climbed
into Mills’s cab and knocked him
unconscious with an iron bar;
others uncoupled the coaches from
the rear of the HVP coach, and
overpowered and handcuffed the
postal workers.
It soon became clear that the
replacement driver – a retiree
known as “Stan Agate” to the gang- was unable to operate the state-
of-the-art Class 40 diesel-electric
locomotive. So, having knocked out
Mills, the robbers had to revive him
so he could take them up the line to
Bridego Bridge. Passing the ❯❯
It is the British press that
made the “legend” that you
see before you, so perhaps I
should ask you who I am.
Ronnie Biggs030-035_Great_Train_Robbery.indd 33 02/12/2016 14:40