62 FEBRUARY 2016 http://www.stampandcoin.co.ukI
f the name Leatherslade Farm
sounds vaguely familiar you
are probably of a certain
age and will no doubt recall
the Great Train Robbery of
8 August, 1963 when the
Glasgow to Euston TPO (Travelling
Post Office) was looted by audacious
London crooks armed with an old
glove to cover a green signal, and a
red lamp to take its place. The ruse
brought the engine to a halt, allowing
the gang to force their way into the
High Value Packages van and grab
mail bags that bulged with £2.3
million in used and unmarked notes;
that’s around £50 million in today’s
money, more than enough to spark
hysteria in the British press and to
send the gangsters scurrying to their
pre-arranged hideout at – yes, you’ve
remembered – Leathersade Farm in
Buckinghamshire. Growing excessively
careless during their stay, they left
a trail of clues behind when they
decided to flee, alarmed by a couple
of aircraft circling over the farm. The
pilots were local amateurs practicing
flying manoeuvres and quite oblivious
to the farmhouse below.
The affair grabbed the nation’s front
pages for many weeks, in part because
mail train robberies were so rare inThe Great Train Robbery of the 1960s grabbed headlines for years after the event, but as Ed
Fletcher reveals, daring, dangerous mail thefts had been happening on the railways ever since the
Travelling Post Office began in the 1860sBritain. If, however, a red-top Fleet
Street editor or two had ordered some
lowly editorial assistants to the morgue
for a perusal of back issues from before
the war they might have come up with
another headline: Train robbers copied
their great-great-godfathers.TPO history
Travelling post offices first ran on
railway lines in 1838, albeit the
earliest was a modified horse-box with
space for only two sorting clerks. By
1855 the Great Western Railway had
a dedicated postal train running to
schedule between London and Bristol.
It left Paddington at 20:46 and arrived
at Bristol at 00:30. From 1866, when
equipment that could pick up and set
down mailbags mechanically began
operating at Slough and Maidenhead
the TPO could travel non-stop.
Dozens of clerks worked on the
newly netted bags as they were hauled
aboard, with sorted bags slung out into
lower nets at the same time.
Such a system operated at Chelford,
Cheshire railway station in April 1864
when three mailbags from Macclesfield
and Knutsford arrived on a mail cart
with a Post Office guard in attendance.
A little beyond the station platform
three posts, 100 yards apart, flankedPostal history
the rails. Two porters with lanterns
hooked a bag on each, then took
position, with lanterns aloft, alongside
the two outer posts. Three minutes
later the non-stop to Crewe thundered
by at fifty miles per hour, scooping
up bags and depositing others. As the
last carriage disappeared, the porters
carried the newly arrived mail into
their station office and began sorting
it. They were still at that task when
the down-mail stopping train from
Crewe pulled into Chelford station at
2.30 am. Its guard reported that on
the up-journey the London bag on
the centre post had failed to pick-up.
All hands were set to searching for it
in the vicinity of the middle post and
nets, but it could not be found.
Three days later the bag’s whereabouts
remained a mystery until a young lad
playing in a copse about half-a-mile
from the station stumbled upon it.
Every one of its registered envelopes
and packages had been neatly slit and
emptied. It was later ascertained by
the Dead Letter Office that valuables
removed included a large quantity high-
denomination postage stamps and bank
notes. Many of the notes had been cut
in half and sent in separate envelopes;
but as they went into the same London
bag the thieves would have soonEven ‘greater’ train robberies
Above, from left:
Bridego Bridge, scene
of the 1963 Great
Train Robbery;
Loading the Travelling
Post Offi ce at Euston
Station; painted by Grace
Lydia Golden in 1948. It
suggests that the theft of
a mailbag or two would
not have greatly taxed
a determined gang. The
original watercolour can
be viewed at The British
Postal Museum, Phoenix
Pl, London WC1p62 Train robbery.indd 62 21/12/2015 10:00