The Great Train Robbery of 1963: The Biggest Train Heist in History

The Great Train Robbery of 1963, widely considered the biggest train robbery in history (in terms of scale and stolen loot), took place on August 8, 1963, when a gang of around 15 men held up a Royal Mail train in Buckinghamshire, England, just northwest of London. In less than half an hour, they stole 2.6 million pounds in used banknotes (the equivalent of a whopping U.S. $64 million in 2025) and escaped into the countryside. According to TIME, the gang’s de facto leader, Bruce Reynolds, has described the robbery as his “Sistine Chapel.”

Their heist came at the height of the British criminal underworld, which began in the 1950s and bled through to the swinging ‘60s, when kingpins like the Kray Twins commanded formidable criminal empires and mingled with famous artists, athletes, aristocrats, and politicians.

During this period, the public was accustomed to criminal celebrity and glorification, and many common people came to root for the robbers. “The public really did have this ‘Good luck to ‘em’ attitude,” recounts former constable John Woolley in an interview with the Daily Express. For generations, the British press and public have continued to treat the outlaws as heroes, villains, and legends.

One of Britain’s most renowned detective units, the London Metropolitan Police Service’s “Flying Squad,” tracked down many of the robbers shortly after the heist. But some gang members found inventive ways to escape prison, and others went on the run for years before either authorities caught them or they turned themselves in.

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The Gang and the ‘Criminal Mastermind’ Behind The Great Train Robbery of 1963

By 1963, some members of the Great Train Robbery gang—Gordon Goody, Buster Edwards, Charlie Wilson, and Bruce Reynolds—had already risen to prominence in London’s thriving criminal underworld, as noted by The Mirror. In 1962, they were part of a team that successfully robbed a van carrying wages at Heathrow Airport. But they were unimpressed with the haul and sought an even greater bounty.

According to the BBC, the perfect opportunity presented itself when a still-unidentified informant tipped off Goody and Edwards about a mail train carrying large sums of cash from Glasgow to London. They passed the information on to Reynolds—later dubbed the Great Train Robbery’s “mastermind”—who assembled a criminal dream team to carry out the heist.

Apart from Reynolds, Goody, and Edwards, there were approximately 12 other members of the Great Train Robbery crew. Charles Wilson served as the gang’s treasurer, tasked with counting and distributing the cash. The team also included Roy James, a racing-trained getaway driver, Ronald “Buster” Edwards, a former boxer, Roger Cordrey, a train-stopping expert, and Jimmy White, a logistics specialist. A team of grunts and fixers from various London gangs accompanied these men.

The Setup for the Great Train Robbery of 1963: The Steal at Bridego Bridge

In the months leading up to the heist, Reynolds’ team used secret meetings and coded language to make their arrangements. According to The Great Train Robbery Documentary, when they couldn’t gather in private, the conspirators met in public parks and kicked a soccer ball around, using code words that sounded like soccer terms.

As they studied the isolated countryside along the train’s route, which ran from Glasgow Central Station to London’s Euston Station, the gang eventually settled on Bridego Bridge as an ideal spot to carry out the robbery. Bridego was a railway bridge in a particularly isolated area of Buckinghamshire, and it ran directly over a small roadway that would be perfect for unloading the banknotes. It was also just down the tracks from a checkpoint called Sears Crossing, where Reynolds’ team hoped to manipulate light signals to stop the train.

According to the gang’s informant, the banknotes were in the first two train cars, which the bandits would have to detach at Sears Crossing and drive to Bridego Bridge to evade the train staff working in the other cars. The rest of the gang would wait at the bridge with two Land Rovers and a truck, disguised as military vehicles, to haul off the bags of cash.

The Plan Part 2

From there, the outlaws planned to hide out at Leatherslade Farm, a local property they had purchased and were already using as a home base for last-minute preparations. Leatherslade was roughly 25 miles from Bridego Bridge—close enough for the gang to make their escape, but not too close to the scene of the crime.

In the hours leading up to the heist, Reynolds’ team cut all the telephone wires in the surrounding countryside to avoid any risk of a surprise emergency call. Reynolds surmised that the robbers would have a 30-minute window to steal the cash and escape.

The Painter and His Masterpiece: Bruce Reynolds’ Gang Pulls Off The Most Profitable Train Heist in History

A few minutes after 3:00 AM, the gang caught sight of the mail train, which Roger Cordrey stopped at Sears Crossing with brilliant simplicity. As the train rolled toward the crossing’s light signals, Cordrey covered the green light with a glove and attached a portable battery to the red light to turn it on.

The conductor, Jack Mills, was confused by the stoppage but was forced to halt. As soon as he did, Reynolds’ crew sprang into action. While Roy James detached the engine and the first two cars from the rest of the train, Buster Edwards and a few others boarded the engine and took the controls from Mills. When Mills put up a fight, one of the men hit him over the head with an iron bar.

This is where the heist hit its first and only snag. As the robbers pushed Mills and his colleague, David Whitby, aside and installed their own substitute driver, they soon realized that he wasn’t familiar with modern train controls. So, they abandoned their plan, kicked him off the train, and forced a badly-injured Mills to guide it to the bridge. Mills struggled through his injuries but eventually managed to comply. After the incident, he never drove a train again.

In an interview with the BBC, Ronnie Biggs described Mills’ battering as a regrettable detail that “not even one of us would like to have happened.” Bruce Reynolds also later expressed his disappointment, claiming that “the whole idea of the plan was no one should be hurt.”

Once the train arrived at Bridego Bridge, the gang formed a line and passed 40-lb bags of money into the waiting vehicles. After 30 minutes, Reynolds halted the operation, and the crew sped off. They had managed to steal 120 bags of cash.

The Fallout from The Great Train Robbery: A National Manhunt and Scotland Yard’s ‘Flying Squad’

When the outlaws arrived at Leatherslade farm, they immediately began counting and dividing the cash. It totaled roughly 2.6 million pounds, making the Great Train Robbery the largest train heist in history, as per inflation calculations. Within days, news of the holdup had spread across the UK, inspiring comparisons with Jesse James and other train robbers of the Wild West. 

As the public became increasingly fascinated with the robbery, pressure built on local police to solve the case, but they quickly realized that they were dealing with experienced criminals. They needed backup, so they called in London’s Scotland Yard’s famous “Flying Squad” detective unit. At the time, the unit was led by Chief Police Superintendent Tommy Butler. Butler was a relentless, obsessive leader who had the full backing of his team and vowed not to retire until every last one of the robbers was behind bars.

Reynolds’ gang had planned to hide out at Leatherslade for a few weeks, then depart individually in different directions. But paranoia set in when they realized that they had become the focus of a national manhunt. By August 12, when a local called the police to report suspicious vehicles at Leatherslade Farm, all of the robbers had already fled. Each held roughly 150,000 pounds in cash, making them multimillionaires by today’s standards.

Arrests Following The Biggest Train Heist Ever: The ‘Flying Squad’ Triumphs

When the police arrived at the gang’s abandoned hideout, they scoured the property for clues. In addition to vehicles, ski masks, and the empty mail bags that had held the missing banknotes, they also found fingerprints. Despite Reynolds’ insistence that the gang was careful to wear gloves and wipe down all the surfaces at Leatherslade, fingerprints from eight of the robbers were scattered throughout the farmhouse. A ketchup bottle was a particularly instrumental clue, in addition to a Monopoly board that the gang likely used to play with the real stolen cash from the heist.

Luckily for the police, Reynolds’ crew was composed of some of London’s most notorious underground criminals, many of whom had been fingerprinted before. It only took the Flying Squad nine days from the morning of the robbery to track down and arrest Charlie Wilson. Shortly after, Roger Cordry and his friend were found attempting to pay three months’ rent for a garage in cash. From there, the other gang members dropped like flies. By December 1963, only three had managed to evade police: Bruce Reynolds, Buster Edwards, and James White.

In January 1964, twelve of the outlaws were convicted for the Great Train Robbery. Most were given 25- to 30-year sentences, which were considered outlandishly harsh at the time.

The Escapees: Ronnie Biggs and Charlie Wilson Break Out of Prison

Although the police managed to quickly track down and convict most of Reynolds’ gang by early 1964, their efforts weren’t a complete success. In addition to the three men who were missing, including Reynolds himself, 2 million pounds in cash still hadn’t been recovered.

Then, in July 1964, Ronnie Biggs escaped prison. With the help of a few of his fellow inmates, he fashioned a rope ladder to scale the walls at London’s Wandsworth Prison, then hid in an outgoing furniture van. Once he escaped, Biggs used his underworld connections to get to Paris, where he underwent plastic surgery to make himself unrecognizable. From there, he fled to Australia and eventually made a permanent home in Brazil. Biggs remained there until 2001, when he became ill and finally returned to face arrest in Britain.

In August 1964, just six weeks after Biggs’ escape, Charlie Wilson also broke out of prison and made his way to Canada. However, Canada, unlike Brazil, had an extradition treaty with the UK. The Flying Squad eventually tracked down Wilson and arrested him in 1968.

The Last Man Down: 'Criminal Mastermind' Bruce Reynolds

By the late 1960s, the Great Train Robbery’s ringleader, Bruce Reynolds, was the only one who had managed to stay completely clear of British authorities. Immediately following the robbery, he fled to France, then Mexico City, where his wife and two-year-old son joined him.

For a few years, the Reynolds family lived a charmed life on the run, residing in a penthouse, enjoying frequent trips to Las Vegas and lavish scuba diving excursions. Reynolds’ son, Nick, later told Sky News that he “had about five different identities and passports myself, let alone my mum and dad.” Although he never knew exactly what his dad was up to, young Nick surmised that his father was a spy.

By 1968, the money was running out, so Reynolds finally returned to England intending to carry out another, even bigger, heist. However, he was captured before he got the chance. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy and robbery in January 1969, and the courts sentenced him to 25 years in prison.

Life for Burt Reynolds after Prison

 As observed by the BBC, like all of his co-conspirators, Reynolds was released early for good behavior. By 1978, he was a free man once again. However, he was soon caught dealing amphetamines and sentenced to three more years in prison.

In the late 1980s, Reynolds was a consultant for the film Buster (1988), which was loosely based on the life of Buster Edwards, the Great Train Robbery, and Edwards’ time with Reynolds in Mexico. In 1995, Reynolds published Autobiography of a Thief. Then, in 1999, he traveled to Brazil to celebrate Ronnie Biggs’ 70th birthday with the long-time fugitive himself.

Reynolds’ son, Nick Reynolds, is a member of the band Alabama 3 (known as A3 in the United States to avoid a legal conflict with the band Alabama). Their track “Woke up this Morning” is the theme song for the mafia crime show The Sopranos.

The Legacy of The Great Train Robbery of 1963

As of 2025, none of the Great Train Robbers are still alive. Bobby Welch, the longest-living member of the gang, died in 2023 at the age of 94. Ronnie Biggs succumbed to illness in 2013, and Bruce Reynolds died a free man that same year.

Other members of the gang, including Charlie Wilson and Buster Edwards, were killed before their time. Wilson was shot by a hitman in Spain in 1990, while Edwards was found hanged in 1994—the police deemed his suicide non-suspicious. Edwards struggled with depression and alcoholism in the years leading up to his death. As noted by The Independent, he often expressed a longing for his days of crime. “It wasn't even the money,” he said. “I've been on jobs that haven't netted me a penn, but, oh, does the adrenaline flow.”

Although none of the Great Train Robbers are still around today, they’ve left a legacy that will live on for generations. Their daring heist and eccentric personalities have inspired films, television shows, and even a Sex Pistols song. To this day, millions are captivated by their tale, which took place in an age when a gang of criminals could score a monumental haul without using a single firearm, and when, according to Reynolds’ Autobiography of a Thief, “stealth and finesse were king.”