Royal mail train almost robbed

[big jim]

8 hours ago, Reorte said:

 

Even if you get the colours and intensity wrong presumably the driver should be saying "something's wrong with those signals, so stop." Same really as the above-mentioned absence of light

On open stretches of simple plain line it’s easy to go into ‘auto pilot’ mode seeing green after green after green but when something is amiss you tend to spot it pretty quickly, I had it a few years back on the wcml near plumpton, north of Penrith, I came off a curve onto the straight where you can see a good 2 miles ahead and thought ‘there a signal missing’, even now I couldn’t tell you how many signals I should be able to see at that point but i instantly knew there wasn’t enough so I slowed down and sure enough a black signal that apparently was showing in the box as displaying a proceed aspect! 
 

I do remember in the bit too distant past the DRS curtain side container wagons were targeted by opportunistic thieves in Scotland (Abington loop?) who were slashing the sides and nicking the contents, namely whiskey, it then got to a point where that train was then signalled non stop through the area, this was pre real time trains days, the locals merely observed the same train stopping at the same time everyday so used that as an opportunity to grab a few free drinks, still at least they didn’t raid an MOD train and unknowingly nick a load of land mines 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-24108657.amp

[Wickham Green too]

47 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

I would imagine the emergency transmission capabilities of the stricken traincrew would be more effective these days than what was available more than half a century ago, and that a detailed location could be given rapidly to the old bill.

What emergency transmission capabilities 60 years ago ? ...... I think radio contact equipment was added to the TPO coaches in response to the Great Robbery !

[BR60103]

I remember a (children's) story from long ago about some crooks who set up a fake pillar box to steal the mail.  They ended up doing a lot of work because after steaming the stamps off they had to deliver the letters. 

 

[Wickham Green too]

Must've been a while ago - you'd have a job steaming off today's self-adhesive stamps ! ( I wonder what stamp collectors do ? )

[The Stationmaster]

22 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

I would imagine the emergency transmission capabilities of the stricken traincrew would be more effective these days than what was available more than half a century ago, and that a detailed location could be given rapidly to the old bill.

The only difference between now and what came in the aftermath of the Great Train Robbery will be the number of systems available which don't rely on wires for transmission purposes.

 

22 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Timing would be key when planning such an attack so as not to stop the wrong train - would they have been able to identify their target using publicly available info like Realtime Trains?

Probably m not too difficult with such stuff available over the 'net,  But surely where (Royal Mail) inside information would be needed is in deciding if it would be profitable to attempt to stop and attack the train?

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

... where (Royal Mail) inside information would be needed is in deciding if it would be profitable to attempt to stop and attack the train?

Depends what they thought they were going to find - Royal Mail might know about high value 'conventional' cargoes but probably not if it was illicit substances posted by a rival gang !

[caradoc]

On 03/08/2023 at 19:50, big jim said:

I do remember in the bit too distant past the DRS curtain side container wagons were targeted by opportunistic thieves in Scotland (Abington loop?) who were slashing the sides and nicking the contents, namely whiskey, it then got to a point where that train was then signalled non stop through the area

 

The usual location for that was Craigneuk, on the mostly freight-only section between Holytown and Wishaw, a less than salubrious area where the S&T sometimes requested the BT Police to assist them if a fault occurred! And when Gushetfaulds Freightliner Terminal still existed, trains from there also had to be given a clear road through the Newton area after theft incidents. 

 

 

[Jim Martin]

On 03/08/2023 at 07:52, russ p said:

I think they have watched buster too many times!

That'll be once, then

 

Jim

[The Johnster]

Those 'in the know', that is, anyone who has worked for Royal Mail in a sorting office, or it's road or rail transport network, will be easily able to identify bags with high-value contents, as they are distinguishable from the labels as containing registered (not recorded) delivery mail which is prioritised.  But it would be difficult from a prospective robber's pov to predict what is inside any given mailbag.  Knowing when and where a high-value item was handed in over the Post Office counter might increase the odds in your favour, but there would be no certainty. 

 

I might be missing something regarding the interference with the signals.  Much has changed since I worked on the railway half a century ago so I may be out of date on this matter, but we had Track Circuit Clips in goods and passenger brake vans, and aboard locos as well.  These were metal clips designed to be stamped over the railheads with your feet, and were connected by 5' of copper wire; the idea was to short out the track circuiting, automatically putting any MAS signal in rear of the TCC to a stop aspect, as if there was a train there.  The idea was to deploy them if you became aware that there was an obstruction on an adjacent line; you stopped the traffic as soon as you could and then looked for a telephone.  At an automatic signal or a semi-automatic working in automatic mode, the signallers are not aware of the precise location of the problem until someone phones it in, and with controlled signals of course they can see the repeater on the panel showing red.  No need to mess with the signals, a piece of wire wrapped around both rails, or conductive metal laid across them, will bring a train to a standstill. 

 

Moreover, and another advantage from a criminal's standpoint, the signaller will instruct the driver when he phones in that there is no reason for the signal to be showing a red aspect, and an electrical failure is assumed, so he is told to pass it at danger and proceed with caution, then obey the next aspect he encounters, so the train will be slow-moving when it reaches the actual location of the hold-up.  A person so minded could stop the train at an automatic signal with some sort of TCC subsitute, then remove it once the loco had passed the signal it had stopped at, so that the panel will assume that the fault has cleared and take no more action than booking an inspection of the signal and any associated relay boxes, which could take some time.

 

Royal Mail's trains do not carry used banknotes, or any currency for that matter, any more, they are simply part of the mail distribution transport network, and neither are there TPOs with sorting on board, but high-value items are still sent by registered mail and while the £2million of the Great Train Robbery or the £6 million of Brinksmat are not likely to be forthcoming, an opportunist crook's Mail Train hold-up will probably generate sums in the 5- or possibly 6-figure area, a decent payday.  As well as high-value registered packages, people send expensive gifts and sums of cash in normal letter covers, birthday cards being easily identified and highly fertile ground for this sort of opportunist theivery.

 

I'm told that Hatton Garden and Soho Birmingham jewellers post the more expensive shop display items to themselves over the weekends, as the registered mail service guarantees replacement at Royal Mail's expense if they go missing and the postage, while a considerable expense, is cheaper than paying the insurance and installing the high-grade security needed in commercial shop premises that are not built with that purpose in mind.  The bulk of their stock is of course kept in secure warehouses away from the shops  What percentage of this traffic goes astray and to what cost to Royal Mail is not known...

 

I bought flowers from Buster at Waterloo Station once, just to say that I had!  Seemed a nice enough bloke.

[Michael Hodgson]

On 04/08/2023 at 19:13, Wickham Green too said:

Depends what they thought they were going to find - Royal Mail might know about high value 'conventional' cargoes but probably not if it was illicit substances posted by a rival gang !

Who are Royail Mail's rival gang ?   Evri ?  😕

[Mike_Walker]

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I might be missing something regarding the interference with the signals.  Much has changed since I worked on the railway half a century ago so I may be out of date on this matter, but we had Track Circuit Clips in goods and passenger brake vans, and aboard locos as well.  These were metal clips designed to be stamped over the railheads with your feet, and were connected by 5' of copper wire; the idea was to short out the track circuiting, automatically putting any MAS signal in rear of the TCC to a stop aspect, as if there was a train there.  The idea was to deploy them if you became aware that there was an obstruction on an adjacent line; you stopped the traffic as soon as you could and then looked for a telephone.  At an automatic signal or a semi-automatic working in automatic mode, the signallers are not aware of the precise location of the problem until someone phones it in, and with controlled signals of course they can see the repeater on the panel showing red.  No need to mess with the signals, a piece of wire wrapped around both rails, or conductive metal laid across them, will bring a train to a standstill. 

I don't know if the section of line in question still has traditional track circuits or the more modern axle counters.  If the latter, then shorting the two rails out has no effect - one of the drawbacks of axle counters and they don't detect broken rails either which TCs did.

 

With the whole network now covered by GSM-R there is the facility for instant communication between traincrew and signaller from any position and the "nuclear" option of pressing the red button to stop the job.

[Nick C]

On 03/08/2023 at 19:50, big jim said:

On open stretches of simple plain line it’s easy to go into ‘auto pilot’ mode seeing green after green after green but when something is amiss you tend to spot it pretty quickly

That was given as one of the causal factors of last year's collision at Loversall - "The driver’s awareness was possibly affected by low workload [i.e. running on greens for ages] and their expectation of the aspect which would be displayed at signal D197"

[The Stationmaster]

5 minutes ago, Nick C said:

That was given as one of the causal factors of last year's collision at Loversall - "The driver’s awareness was possibly affected by low workload [i.e. running on greens for ages] and their expectation of the aspect which would be displayed at signal D197"

It's been a known problem since wat back in BR days especially on the SR where drib ving al line speed ona succession of double yellows was effectively built into the timetable as it was the only way the TT would work.  Add in the 'we're never checked here' syndrome - although that was priobably mire common in the steam age - and there but for the grace of God go more than a few footplatemen.

[St. Simon]

9 hours ago, Mike_Walker said:

they don't detect broken rails either which TCs did.

 

Hi,

 

Sorry to go off topic, whilst Axle Counters don't detect rail breaks, there is certainly no guarantee that Track Circuits will, they weren't designed to carry out thay function and they are not relied upon to detect rail breaks.

 

Track Circuits failures resulting from a broken rail is very uncommon, it requires a clean break of a couple of mm in dry conditions to cause a failure. I follow the daily national logs and the detection of a rail break by a track circuit failure is very very uncommon.

 

Track Circuits may detect rail breaks in theory, but not necessarily in practice.

 

Simon

Edited August 9, 2023 by St. Simon