Qualla: Great Train Robbery (1963)

Great Train Robbery (1963): Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karen Hogan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Jack Mills was 57 years old, a Crewe railwayman who had been driving trains for most of his working life. In the early hours of 8 August 1963 he climbed into the cab of English Electric Type 4 locomotive D326 at the head of the Glasgow to Euston travelling post office and started south. Just after three in the morning, a red signal stopped him at Sears Crossing, north of Cheddington. It was the wrong red. Someone had covered the green light with a glove and wired up a battery. When his second man, David Whitby, walked down to the line-side telephone to ring the signalman, the cables were cut. Mills tried to fight off the man who came up into his cab. Then another man came up behind him with an iron bar.

Image: Karen Hogan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Train Robbery (1963): The Driver They Beat

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karen Hogan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Jack Mills never really recovered. The injury to his head left him with constant trauma headaches. He went back to work doing light duties because he needed the money, then retired ill in 1967. He died in 1970 of leukemia, and his relatives believed the beating had hastened the e...

Image: Karen Hogan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Train Robbery (1963): Bridego Bridge

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Spborthwick, CC BY-SA 3.0. The bridge is still there, spanning a country lane near Ledburn in Buckinghamshire, on the West Coast Main Line between Leighton Buzzard and Cheddington. It is officially called Mentmore Bridge now, the name changed after the events of that morning made the old one infamous. The ...

Image: Spborthwick | CC BY-SA 3.0

Great Train Robbery (1963): The Take and the Hideout

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karen Hogan, CC BY-SA 4.0. It was a Bank Holiday weekend, which meant the Glasgow run was unusually full. The high-value-package coach normally held around £300,000 in registered mail and used banknotes from Scottish banks. That night it held £2,595,997 and 10 shillings, in 120 mailbags. The robbers had se...

Image: Karen Hogan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Train Robbery (1963): Tommy Butler and the Flying Squad

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karen Hogan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler took charge of the London side of the investigation within four days of the robbery. He was a famously secretive, fanatically dedicated man known as the Grey Fox, who lived with his mother and worked his Train Robbery Squad until they b...

Image: Karen Hogan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Train Robbery (1963): Folk Heroes and Their Victims

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karen Hogan, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is a long British tradition of turning robbers into romantic figures, from Dick Turpin onwards, and the men of Sears Crossing inherited that gilding. The audacity of the planning, the size of the take, the escapes, the years on the run in Mexico and Brazil all proved irresi...

Image: Karen Hogan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Train Robbery (1963): The Bridge Today

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karen Hogan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Trains still rumble across what is now called Mentmore Bridge several times an hour on the West Coast Main Line. The fields around Sears Crossing look much as they did in 1963: hawthorn hedges, sheep, the long flat run of Buckinghamshire that the train was crossing toward London ...

Image: Karen Hogan | CC BY-SA 4.0