The Great Train Robbery

Originally Aired: April 13, 1953

Suspense #508, "The Great Train Robbery," features Fred MacMurray as Walter Beaumart, a forty-two-year-old everyman who has spent sixteen years working at a toy manufacturing company for sixty-two dollars a week. Living in Oakland with his wife Bess, Walter has watched his youthful dreams and ambitions fade under the weight of endless bills and responsibilities. When Cousin Eugene comes to visit, he brings more than pleasant conversation to the dinner table. Eugene takes a keen interest in Walter's frustrated aspirations and soon presents him with a tantalizing proposition: split twenty-five thousand dollars by robbing a train carrying cash from the casinos of Reno, Nevada.

Eugene has worked out the details meticulously. Every Thursday at eleven o'clock, a train leaves Reno carrying money destined for banks in Oakland and San Francisco. Between the stops at Soda Springs and Dutch Flat lies a twenty-minute stretch of lonely desert where the train could be stopped and robbed before authorities could respond. Walter, the plain and unremarkable man who wouldn't merit a second glance on the street, finds himself contemplating whether those very qualities that have kept him invisible might be exactly what he needs to pull off the perfect crime.