Thread: Ronnie Biggs

Originally Posted by DragoonGuard

Which one of the gang actually hit the old boy in the train?

Was it Briggs himself? (Biggs even)

Biggs and others have admitted they know the identity but that is as far as they are going with it...Honour among thieves..British Omertà.

It was probably Biggs himself , as his :minor: role was to move the train , but when he got on the train it was a new type ,one of which he could not drive , hahahah wankers ,, so they forced Mr Mills to move it .

There is a pub in Darlington (home of the railways ) which is called busters , its named after buster edwards and carries portraits of all the gang in stained glass , and the walls are adorned with newspaper cuttings about the robbery , seems like they are modern day robin hoods to some people , and yes i have had a few in there , but not for a while now .[edit]




The Robbery from wiki.


Late on Wednesday 7 August 1963 the travelling post office (TPO) "Up Special" train set off from Glasgow, Scotland en-route to Euston Station in London. It consisted of a diesel locomotive and 12 maroon coloured carriages occupied not by fare paying passengers, but by 80 post office staff who would sort mail scooped up from gantries en route ready for onwards distribution upon arrival in London. The second carriage behind the engine was known as the HVP (High Value Package Coach) where registered mail was sorted and this contained valuables including large quantities of money, registered parcels and packages. Usually the value of these items would have been in the region of £300,000 but, because there had been a Bank Holiday weekend in Scotland, the total on the day of the robbery was £2.3 million. (About £30 million today).[2]

At approximately 3 a.m. the driver Jack Mills stopped the train at a location known as 'Sears Crossing' between Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire and Cheddington in Buckinghamshire, having seen a red signal. However unknown to him the Watford Signalling & Telegraph equipment had been tampered with by members of a 15 strong gang of robbers from London led by Bruce Reynolds and including Ronnie Biggs, Charlie Wilson, Jimmy Hussey, Roy James, Jimmy White (a former British Army paratrooper), Tommy Wisbey, Gordon Goody and Ronald "Buster" Edwards. The robbers had placed a glove over the green signal lamp and connected a six-volt Ever Ready battery to temporarily power the red light. The locomotive's second man 26 year old David Whitby jumped down from the cab to call the signalman from a trackside telephone, only to find the cables had been cut. Upon returning to the train, he was thrown down the embankment of the railway track. One of the gang members (who did not carry guns) then boarded the train cab and hit 57 year old Mills on the head with an iron bar, causing a black eye and facial bruising. The five postal workers in the HVP carriage were then tied up and pushed into a corner.

The robbers now encountered a problem. They needed to move the train to a location where they could load their ex-army getaway truck with the money and had decided to do so at bridge No.127 (known as 'Bridego Bridge') approximately half a mile ((about 800 m)) further along the track. One of the robbers had spent months befriending railway staff and familiarising himself with the layout and operation, but it was decided instead to use an experienced train driver to move the train from the signals to the bridge after uncoupling the unnecessary carriages. However the person they chose (later referred to as "Stan Agate") was unable to operate the English Electric Class 40 diesel locomotive as the model had only recently been introduced and was different to the local trains he was familiar with. It was quickly decided that the original driver Jack Mills would move the train, the stopping point near the bridge being indicated by a white sheet stretched between poles on the track. Stan Agate's participation in the robbery was Ronnie Biggs's only task and when it became obvious that they were useless they were banished to the waiting truck to help load the mail bags.

At the bridge the robbers removed about 120 sacks which they transferred quickly from the HPV to the truck by forming a human chain. The gang departed 30 minutes after the robbery had begun and in an effort to mislead any potential witness in addition to the army truck they used two Land Rover vehicles both of which had the registration plates BMG 757 A. They then unloaded the sacks at Leatherslade Farm between Oakley and Brill in Buckinghamshire which was a run down farm 27 miles away that they had bought two months earlier as their hideout. There they began counting the proceeds of the robbery. £2.3 million was stolen in used £1, £5 and £10 notes.