Two bandits pulled off a daredevil train stickup just south of Springfield on Christmas Eve 1912.

In a robbery the Illinois State Register said eclipsed “the wildest dreams of the yellowback novel,” the two stopped a Kansas City-bound Chicago & Alton train near Iles Junction on Christmas Eve 1912. Here’s part of the Register’s story:

“(M)asked men, who had been riding on the blind baggage of the Alton ‘Hummer,’ climbed over the tender, covered the engineer and fireman with their guns and ordered them to ‘stop.’

“Compelling the fireman to uncouple the engine and National Express baggage car from the rest of the train, the robbers ran the engine ahead a short distance. One robber covered the engineer and fireman while another made five unsuccessful attempts to blow the express safe – two with nitroglycerine and three with dynamite.

“The robbers worked forty-five minutes in the baggage car, thus giving a switch engine, carrying (police) officers, ample time to reach the scene, when they fled and (a) running fight followed.

“A sack of corporation bonds, and what are thought to be lottery tickets, as well as a number of small packages were taken from the safe by the bandits, who later threw away the loot as the posse were in close pursuit. …

“The Alton ‘Hummer’ is known by railroad officials as a ‘heavy money train.’ The baggage car was loaded with valuable Christmas packages for points between this city and Kansas City.”

The two robbers escaped through a nearby field as police and others – conveyed by the switch engine, automobiles and, in one case, a horse and buggy – arrived at the train, the Register reported.

Authorities arrested local police character Elmer “Slats” Vigas and Jack Hartnett, a former saloon owner from Chicago, a few hours after the robbery. The two gunmen used white handkerchiefs as masks, but railroad employees claimed they could identify Vigas and Hartnett from their general physiques, their voices and Hartnett’s limp.

At their trial in February 1913, however, Vigas and Hartnett both produced alibi witnesses. After drawn-out deliberations – the Illinois State Journal said jurors took 19 ballots, the Register said 17 – the jury found the men not guilty.

Vigas, however, was implicated in another spectacular mail robbery 10 years later. Six gunmen invaded the Third and Jefferson streets train station on April 1, 1923, and, in a blaze of gunfire, hijacked five bags of mail. Miraculously, only one man was slightly wounded during the gunplay, and the robbers made off with only a few hundred dollars worth of loot.

Police fingered Vigas as one of the stickup’s planners. This time, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in Leavenworth federal prison.

For more about both mail robberies and many other topics in local history, visit SangamonLink.org, the online encyclopedia of the Sangamon County Historical Society. SangamonLink, a free service of the historical society, is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via any web-connected device.