'What a waste of money!', the 15 men probably thought. Masks on and sticks and iron bats out! Most of the 75 mail sorters working on the train remained unaware of the 20 minute incident during which the thieves uncoupled the engine and the front two carriages of the train to drive them up to Bridego Bridge a mile away. It didn't take them long to break into the second carriage there, restrain the 4 workers inside and load 120 bags in a truck waiting under the bridge.
Et voilà! 2.6 Million £ of easy money for the greatest train robbery in History.
Rewards of up to 260000 £ offered by insurers, banks and the Post Office probably helped a little bit to gather information on the gang and only 6 months later 12 of the 15 iron bat ninjas were sentenced to +300 years of total jail-term. The robbery's mastermind, Bruce Reynolds, only got arrested in 1969 and given a 10 year sentence but in the meanwhile 2 had already escaped. One had fled to France with a solid chunk of the money until he returned to the U.K. for medical treatment in 2001. He got imprisonned and released in 2009 because of his health condition. The other had been tracked down by Scotland Yard in Canada when he invited his brother to come over for Christmas 1978...and a happy new year...in jail again.
That makes 13 men out of 15...
2 have never been identified indeed.