Part of the Monopoly set - including the 'Get Out of Jail Free' card - the Great Train Robbery gang played with while holed up in a farm house after the heist have been unearthed.

The board game items recovered from the scene by the police include both Monopoly money and real bank notes from the £2.6 million haul the men famously played the game with.

There are three of the six metal playing tokens - a car, motorbike and, aptly, a train - as well as a die, two wooden hotels and five houses and two Community Chest cards including the Get Out of Jail card.

The gang laid low at Leatherslade Farm near Ayelsbury, Bucks, in the days after the audacious raid on a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London on August 8, 1963.

Cash: Money thieves used while playing Monopoly (
Image:
BNPS)

Other items directly connected to the heist that have now come to light are the throttle lever from the cab of the locomotive that pulled the train and even a piece of the railway track.

There is also Ronnie Biggs' so-called escape book from prison which logs his escape from the exercise yard at Wandsworth Prison in south London in 1965.

The items belong to a long-time collector of Great Train Robbery memorabilia. The unnamed owner became friends with Biggs and gang leader Bruce Reynolds in their latter years and was able to get many of the items signed.

He has now put the collection up for sale at auction and experts believe it could sell for up to £100,000.

Many of the items were recovered from the crime scene or from the farm house by the police and used as exhibits for the 1964 trial of the 13 robbers.

Relic: The power lever from the locomotive (
Image:
BNPS)

They were held in police storage for many years until they became 'spent' and then acquired by one of the officers involved in the case who in turn passed them on to the current owner.

Jonathan Humbert, of J P Humbert Auctioneers of Towcester, Northants, said: "Without a shadow of a doubt this is an unrivaled sale of Great Train Robbery artefacts, the likes of which will never been seen again.

"No other person has gone to the lengths the vendor has gone to to acquire items that were either there on the night of the robbery, in the aftermath of or or linked to the robbery thereafter.

"For example, he acquired the locomotive throttle lever in the 1980s by tracing the engine to a scrapyard. He also has the coat of arms for Linslade Magistrates Court in Bedfordshire which he got when it was being refurbished.

Artefact: A piece of the Bridgeo Bridge where the Great Train Robbery took place (
Image:
BNPS)

"Some of the items make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up because of its direct connection to the robbery.

"This is a truly historical sale dealing in a very important part of British social history.

"All the items are perfectly legal to sell and have impeccable provenance or have been signed and authenticated by the robbers and other items signed by the police involved at the time.

"There are 429 lots and there is no reserve on any of them so everything must go."

Other interesting Great Train Robbery artefacts in the sale include the number plates of a Land Rover and truck used as getaway vehicles and SAS cap badge worn by Bruce Reynolds on the night - the gang dressed in military clothing to fool any police they ran into.

The auction takes place on June 16.

The Great Train Robbery

A 15-man gang escaped with £2.6 million - worth around £40 million today - from the Glasgow to London Royal Mail train on August 8, 1963.

Although the gang did not use any weapons during the robbery, train driver Jack Mills was hit over the head with a metal bar and never worked again, dying in 1970.

Much of the stolen money was never recovered but the ringleaders of the gang were sentenced to 30 years in prison following a trial in Aylesbury, Bucks. in 1964.

Ronnie Biggs escaped from Wandsworth prison in 1965 and fled the country before returning in 2001 for medical help. He was jailed upon his return before being released on compassionate grounds in 2009. He died in 2013.