Great Train Robbery: Bruce Reynolds' son on 60th anniversary

Nick Reynolds said he had a "unique bond" with his father

The son of the key planner behind the Great Train Robbery said he never realised his father was a criminal.

Nick Reynolds was a year old when his dad Bruce Reynolds was part of the gang that stole £2.6m from a mail train in Buckinghamshire on 8 August 1963.

"I assumed that he was a spy," he said on the 60th anniversary of the crime.

He said "the penny dropped" when his father was arrested in 1968, at a point the family had been on the run for five years.

The London gang's haul was estimated to be worth about £45m today and the 15 men convicted received lengthy sentences.

Bruce Reynolds was eventually arrested in Torquay in 1968 and jailed for 25 years, although he was released in 1978 and eventually wrote Autobiography Of A Thief. He died in 2013.

• BBC Sounds: BBC Three Counties' Justin Dealey talks to Nick Reynolds

His son, a musician and sculptor, has memories of using five different aliases across that five-year period when his parents were on the run, but said he saw no signs of anxiety or stress in them.

He even recalled when the family returned to the UK from Mexico, they visited the bridge near Cheddington, close to where the crime took place.

"I suppose my mum wanted to see it," he said.

"It's an old cliché - they always say villains return to the scene of the crime."

Nick Reynolds was told later by his father that they had visited the scene of the crime - the Bridego Bridge between Cheddington and Leighton Buzzard - as a family while on the run

Reflecting on his childhood in Central America, he said: "My dad had managed to convince everyone he was an upper class English businessmen."

Comparing his father to James Bond, Mr Reynolds said his dad drove an Aston Martin and went scuba diving, leading him to think he was a spy.

Nick said his dad "dressed extremely smartly" in designer clothes and "he kind of modelled himself on the character Cary Grant played in To Catch a Thief".

At times his parents would fly from Mexico to Las Vegas just to eat a steak or watch Frank Sinatra perform.

"They looked like a young couple, very much in love, living the good life," said their son.

Nick Reynolds remembers opening the door to the police officers who arrested his father (pictured outside a magistrates court hearing) in 1968

Luke Evans played Bruce Reynolds in the 2013 BBC dramatisation of the Great Train Robbery

Mr Reynolds believes the story has remained popular for six decades because the sentencing for the train robbers "made them working class martyrs".

Thames Valley Police has described the theft as "the most unique and daring robbery Britain had ever seen", but highlighted that train driver Jack Mills was hit over the head during the raid and "his family insist that the blow to the head contributed to his ill health and later early death". His workmate David Whitby "had problems dealing with the trauma of the robbery".

'Fascinating story'

As well as being a sculptor, Nick Reynolds is also a member of British band Alabama 3, whose song Woke Up This Morning was used over the opening credits of TV mafia drama The Sopranos.

The Great Train Robbery has been dramatised several times - Phil Collins played gang member Bruce Edwards in the 1988 movie Buster, while the BBC adapted the tale in 2013 with a two-part drama told from the perspective of the robbers (with Luke Evans playing Reynolds) and the perspective of policeman in charge of catching them - Det Ch Supt Tommy Butler (played by Jim Broadbent).

Mr Reynolds believes the story could one day be adapted into a long-form television drama like the acclaimed American crime series.

"It's a fascinating story. You've got the robbery itself, the capture and the escapes," he said.

"Songs have been written about it, even the band I'm in have written a song about it, so I think it's a very interesting thing."

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