Post by Villain on Apr 17, 2015 12:03:38 GMT
Sorry Sam I meant to reply earlier... when I started on the railway back in 1983 I was based at Stonebridge Park Depot at Wembley and one of my regular drivers was a lovely old bloke called Jimmy Knowles, back in'67 he was still a driver's assistant (also known as 'secondman') and whilst on nights he and his regular driver were booked to assist a pair of Rugby based men during the shooting of the various railway related scenes in the film. During these night shoots the coaching stock for the mail train was kept in a siding on the Northampton to Market Harborough line when not in use while the loco (here comes the nerdy bit), an English Electric Type 4 Diesel-Electric numbered D318 was kept at Rugby Shed. Jimmy and his driver had to bring the mail train from the Northampton line through Market Harborough with another Type 4 loco and on to Rugby where D318 was coupled on and driven to Theddingworth for the actual shooting. This carried on for about two weeks and the freight train which is seen passing the mail train in one shot was worked by a pair of Northampton based men. The mail train loco D318 was worked by Rugby driver Mick Burton and his young secondman John Atkinson. My mate Colin 'Griff' Griffiths is drinking buddies with both of them and although both are now long retired they still remember the filming very clearly, and I've spoken to Mick myself at ASLEF reunions about the film. For the scenes where Robert Powell climbs off the loco to use the lineside phone (which the robbers had cut the wires to) he had to borrow John's uniform as the one provided by the props department was way too big. Mick Burton was booked as the driver for the filming as he was the only Rugby driver on nights at the time who still knew the route like the back of his hand. As the route had bee nclosed to traffic in June '66 the rails were quite rusty and weeds had started to appear, which meant the film crew had to clean the tops of the rails with mops and brushes to make it looked 'used' in the finished film. During breaks Mick and John spent quite a bit of time chatting with Stanley Baker in the cab of D318 and was invited along with everyone else involved to the end of filming party in Theddingworth, by all accounts it was a right old knees up.
My mate Griff also has memories from the time of the film as back then he worked in Rugby's recently opened new Signalbox and remembers seeing the film crew set up their gear on board D318 outside Rugby shed before it set of for Theddingworth. He nipped over one night to have a look and noticed both cabs were full of lighting and camera equipment. Although an actor played the part of the driver in the film, Mick Burton can be seen driving D318 in the opening title sequence and in the 'head on' shots as the train approaches the bridge ready to be stopped by the gang. Just as it pulls up you see Mick duck down out of sight then the actor playing the driver climbs down from the cab along with Robert Powell.
I mentioned earlier my own tentative connectons to the real robbery of 1963 - after the gang had made off with the loot the first people on the scene were a Rugby crew on a fitted freight train and when they stopped alongside the front portion of the stricken mail train at Bridego Bridge, the driver attended to the Post Office workers and instructed his secondman Bill Green to drive the loco (English Electric Type 4 D326) and the first two mail vans down to Cheddington Station to alert the signalman there of the situation. Normal railway practice then was to use the lineside phone but the gang had cut the wires, the next move would be to walk to the nearest signalbox but it would have taken at least twenty minutes to walk from Bridego Bridge to Cheddington so Bill was duly told to get there as quick as possible by taking the front portion of the train. (I've walked it myself several times on ballast jobs and it takes me about half an hour with my little legs). Bill later got into a lot of trouble over this as he was still not passed out as a driver. Three decades or so later a two car Class 150 unit was named 'Bill Green' in his honour. When I got my drivers job at Rugby I used to see Bill regularly when travelling passenger to get to various jobs in the Bletchley area where he was by then based, and as he already knew Griff we got chatting about that night in August '63. He recalled it in some detail and felt slightly peeved at being reprimanded for helping out as best he could as afterall he was only following his driver's instructions. Back then the driver was king and you did exactly what you were told to do!
A few years ago I started conducting other company's drivers on railgrinder machines over routes they don't sign and one of the regulars at the time was the grandson of Jack Mills, the driver of D326 on 8th August '63. The railway community is very large but still tightknit nonetheless, almost everyone knows everyone else and although some don't like to talk about the robbery it's still part of history - Bridge 127, the scene of the robbery itself is still known to most of us as 'robber's bridge', even our regular taxi drivers refer to it as such when taking us down there for ballast jobs at weekends. In the Winter months it's a spooky place to be at three in the morning!
I've uploaded another batch of film shots to my photo-bucket account which I'll post later on ;O)
My mate Griff also has memories from the time of the film as back then he worked in Rugby's recently opened new Signalbox and remembers seeing the film crew set up their gear on board D318 outside Rugby shed before it set of for Theddingworth. He nipped over one night to have a look and noticed both cabs were full of lighting and camera equipment. Although an actor played the part of the driver in the film, Mick Burton can be seen driving D318 in the opening title sequence and in the 'head on' shots as the train approaches the bridge ready to be stopped by the gang. Just as it pulls up you see Mick duck down out of sight then the actor playing the driver climbs down from the cab along with Robert Powell.
I mentioned earlier my own tentative connectons to the real robbery of 1963 - after the gang had made off with the loot the first people on the scene were a Rugby crew on a fitted freight train and when they stopped alongside the front portion of the stricken mail train at Bridego Bridge, the driver attended to the Post Office workers and instructed his secondman Bill Green to drive the loco (English Electric Type 4 D326) and the first two mail vans down to Cheddington Station to alert the signalman there of the situation. Normal railway practice then was to use the lineside phone but the gang had cut the wires, the next move would be to walk to the nearest signalbox but it would have taken at least twenty minutes to walk from Bridego Bridge to Cheddington so Bill was duly told to get there as quick as possible by taking the front portion of the train. (I've walked it myself several times on ballast jobs and it takes me about half an hour with my little legs). Bill later got into a lot of trouble over this as he was still not passed out as a driver. Three decades or so later a two car Class 150 unit was named 'Bill Green' in his honour. When I got my drivers job at Rugby I used to see Bill regularly when travelling passenger to get to various jobs in the Bletchley area where he was by then based, and as he already knew Griff we got chatting about that night in August '63. He recalled it in some detail and felt slightly peeved at being reprimanded for helping out as best he could as afterall he was only following his driver's instructions. Back then the driver was king and you did exactly what you were told to do!
A few years ago I started conducting other company's drivers on railgrinder machines over routes they don't sign and one of the regulars at the time was the grandson of Jack Mills, the driver of D326 on 8th August '63. The railway community is very large but still tightknit nonetheless, almost everyone knows everyone else and although some don't like to talk about the robbery it's still part of history - Bridge 127, the scene of the robbery itself is still known to most of us as 'robber's bridge', even our regular taxi drivers refer to it as such when taking us down there for ballast jobs at weekends. In the Winter months it's a spooky place to be at three in the morning!
I've uploaded another batch of film shots to my photo-bucket account which I'll post later on ;O)