Great Train Robbery : Biggs, Reynolds and the long tail

On 8 August 1963 a Glasgow-to-London Royal Mail train was robbed at Bridego Bridge in Buckinghamshire of £2.6 million. Most of the gang were convicted at Aylesbury; Ronnie Biggs later fled. In the early hours of 8 August 1963, the Glasgow-to-Euston Travelling Post Office — a Royal Mail train carrying high-value packets — was stopped at Bridego Bridge (also called Mentmore Bridge) near Ledburn in Buckinghamshire. The gang took 120 mailbags. The official figure recorded at the time was about £2.6 million in used banknotes, then one of the largest cash thefts on the British public record.

Driver Jack Mills and secondman David Whitby were the railway staff on the locomotive. Mills was assaulted and later became a lasting public symbol of the night; this page records that he was injured and does not dwell on wounds. The gang used Leatherslade Farm in Buckinghamshire as a hideout. Buckinghamshire Constabulary and Scotland Yard's Flying Squad found the farm after a tip and a search — a discarded Monopoly set and fingerprints became folklore, but the convictions rested on a wider forensic and witness file.

At Aylesbury in 1964, Mr Justice Edmund Davies sentenced several men, including Ronald 'Buster' Edwards, Charles Wilson, Roy James and others, to terms of up to thirty years. Bruce Reynolds, the planner, was caught in 1968. Ronnie Biggs escaped from Wandsworth in 1965, reached Brazil and became a tabloid exile until he returned in 2001. The case is convicted: names, a sum and a court. Much of the cash was never recovered.