Pawan Kumar
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The Great Train Robbery: Often people’s pockets are cut or small thefts are done in bus or train. You must have seen vicious robbers stealing in the train in the movies, but today we will tell you about the train robbery in history which is the biggest train robbery ever. How some robbers made away with about 300 crores from a moving train. Yes, it was a heist that shook the whole world.
World’s biggest train robbery
On August 8, 1963, 16 robbers carried out this incident. On 7 August 1963, a train named Britain’s Royal Mail left Glasgow for London at 7 o’clock in the night. It was a mail carrying train in which 72 post office employees were also present. These employees used to sort the mail inside the train. The train was to reach London in the morning after about 12 hours. There were a total of 12 bogies in this train and just behind the engine was the HVP i.e. High Value Packages coach. In which there were about 300 million ponds i.e. about 300 crore rupees according to today. Those 16 robbers already had all this information.
No weapon was used in the robbery
The robbers had executed this robbery in a very clever way. The surprising thing was that the robbers did not use any weapon in this robbery. With the help of just one iron rod, he stole 128 boxes full of currency notes from a moving train.
All the planning
The planning was started by the robbers a month before the robbery. Gordon Goody, Buster Edward and Bruce Raynold were the masterminds of the entire heist. All these three were robbers, but before that they did not have experience of robbery in train. That’s why he included three more vicious criminals from Britain in his gang, who were experts in train robbery. Apart from this, a former driver who had information about the train was also made a part of this robbery. Apart from this, a technician named Cordray was also involved in this robbery, whose job was to spoil the railway signal. Overall, a gang of 16 expert people got ready for this robbery.
Train stopped by changing the signal
All these robbers stood at a traffic signal falling a few hours before London. He covered the green light of the signal with a paper and then switched on the red light with the help of a battery. The train reached this signal at around 3 am on 8th August. Jack Mills, 58, was driving the train, when seeing the red signal on the way, he immediately stopped the train.
Cleared all the money in 15 minutes
As soon as the train stopped, these 16 pre-prepared robbers entered inside the train. One of them went into the engine and hit the driver Jack on the head with an iron rod, knocking him unconscious. After that these people reached the bogie behind the engine, where inside 128 boxes were 300 million pounds i.e. about 300 crore rupees. According to the plan, the robbers had already kept a truck ready outside. The robbers loaded these boxes into the truck in just 15 minutes and then fled with them.
Could not get full money back
The police continued to investigate for many years. Although, years later the police got success in catching these robbers, but all the money stolen from the train could never be recovered. This was the biggest robbery in history, known as The Great Train Robbery.
