And if so, what of those behind the Great Train Robbery of 1963? Obviously there, the motive would have been money, a considerable sum even back then, making off with over £2.6 million (equivalent to about £48.6 million today) That's around 3.7 million USD, or 69.3 million USD today.

Their plan consisted quite simply of tampering with the line signals. Covering a green light blank and adding a six-volt battery to the red to power it, bringing the cargo train to a grinding halt at three in the morning. The fireman disembarked from the train to call ahead to find out what the problem was on the line, only to find the phone lines had been cut before he, and the driver, were overpowered and rendered unconscious with coshes, similar to policemen baton's but made of metal.

There were difficulties in moving the train along further, to the then-named Bridego Bridge, which by itself should have been an indication of trouble. But those guarding the cash in the High Value Packages carriage, a total of five, seemed to have no idea what was happening when they too were overpowered by the gang, two outside the carriage and three inside, handcuffed together or unconscious. Despite the value of the packages there was no actual security presence, intended to have kept the transfer quiet and known to as few people as possible.

It took less than twenty minutes to transfer all but eight of the 128 sacks on board by forming a human chain into their truck, and using two landrovers as decoys baring the same license plate to confuse any potential witnesses. Considering there were a total of 72 postal workers on the train in different carts, there would have been plenty of time for someone to realise something was wrong, but many were busy just sorting the mail.

Why eight bags were left behind, you may ask? The robbers had set a strict time limit of only thirty minutes, starting from stopping the train.

Their downfall came from a number of factors. Perhaps most notably, telling the workers not to move for half an hour. Interpreted as the press to mean a half hour drive from the robbery point, which could have easily have been wrong, but did allow for the police to assign a dragnet tactic to find the vehicles, and any other evidence such as loose notes. Couple this with the extra hired to torch the farmhouse they had hid at to distribute nearly £150,000 each among the participants, and as part of the planning stage, not actually doing what he was hired for and instead running with the money he was given for the job, presumably, this allowed the hideout to be located, and evidence found there, including details of their plans, eventually leading to the arrest and conviction of most of the 15 gang members and associates.

A series of failures helped their plans to succeed. Given that in 1961 alarms, bars, and bolts had been fitted to most of the High Value Package carriages, except for a small handful kept in reserve due to funding. On that fateful day however one of those reserve carriages was in use to transfer the money, one without any of those features at all, which would have made it much more difficult, even without security postings, to successfully rob the train.

The first alarm of the robbery had been raised at 4:20am, nearly a full hour after it had happened and they had left with the loot. The exact message consisted of "A robbery has been committed and you'll never believe it – they've stolen the train!" - So, yes, you would have to have a loco-motive to steal a train, or at least the contents of one of the cars!

That long bit of history aside, despite being relevant to trains still :P
I have a train for you all, considering of six carriages for Levels 1 & 2, and seven for levels 3 & 4. Including some of those "High Value Carriages" towards the end, or at least a couple of random "surprises" of sorts, with letters changed of course. That's a total of 26 giveaways to choose from, or 330 Points to enter the lot.
A=? T=% L=§ D=♥

The train itself is hidden behind a SGTools check with the following rules.

Giveaway rules

  • Minimum ratio using number of gifts Sent/Won on Steamgifts: 0.2
  • Your account must have activated all the won gifts
  • Your account is not allowed to have won the same game multiple times.

Without further ado, All Aboard!.
The train shall reach its destination on Wednesday, 16th March 2016. At 8:00PM GMT (or 12 Noon, PST.)

(The note about a "list of giveaway abusers" is just a deterrent, no such "list" exists. Least not that I know of, and unless hosted off-site, would violate the "calling out" rule.)

8 years ago*

Comment has been collapsed.

Thanks!

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Approximately five hours left to get your entries in...
Bump ;)

Already checked a couple of links at random, will be checking the whole lot prior to sending keys later. So far so good with the sgtools entries check. Though only even had 1 invalid last time I did a train this way.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Bump and thank you for a nice train.:)

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

All keys or gift links have been activated. Be sure to check your won pages <3

A total of 980 giveaway links were generated during the train by SGTools. Unfortunately, I don't know how many of these are unique visitors. Could be the whole lot. In any case, good news is that 0 of the giveaways were entered without first passing the SGTools barrier, meaning 0 leaks. Though I hadn't exactly set the barrier very high to get over, good to know people will play fair.

Entries varied from 99 for dUpLicity ~Beyond the Lies~ all the way to 246 for Monster Jam Battlegrounds.
This is perhaps expected, given the lowest was set for Level 4, while the highest was for Lv1. Though the final giveaway, at level 4, did reach 204 entries.

I'd personally love to have those odds when I find trains to join :P

There's still varied random giveaways underway from Lv1 to Lv3, public, on my profile, lasting between today and Sunday.

8 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Sign in through Steam to add a comment.