STUART ROWSELLS STOP THE TRAIN THEORY is DEAD IN THE WATER

INTRODUCTION

Mr Stuart Rowsell, recently made the truly sensational announcement on Facebook, that all of us who think that Ned Kelly planned to wreck the train at Glenrowan are wrong. The people who got it wrong, are virtually all Kelly sympathisers and non-sympathisers, and all pro and anti-Kelly authors, historians, writers, journalists and commentators apart from J.J. Kenneally. Rowsell says that what Kelly REALLY planned to do, wasn’t to wreck the train but to stop it.

What follows is a detailed critique of Rowsell’s claim, an exposure of the many serious weaknesses in Rowsell’s argument, and confirmation that the ‘traditional’ view is overwhelmingly supported by the facts and the evidence, and should continue to be regarded as the most accurate historical account of what the Kelly Gang planned to do at Glenrowan.

What will be shown is that Rowsell misrepresents what the traditional view actually is, he misrepresents the strength of the historical evidence on which the traditional view is based, and uses biased and carefully selected fragments of information to create a narrative that is completely at odds with the big picture.

 

ROWSELL MISREPRESENTS THE TRADITIONAL VIEW

The broad outline of what the Kelly gang planned for Glenrowan is familiar to everyone: it involved breaking the railway line and waiting nearby for a special police train to crash. Survivors of the crash would either be shot or taken prisoner by the gang wearing protective armour. Precisely what would happen next was never clearly spelled out, but using the hostages to secure his mother’s release from prison, and robbing the Bank at Benalla were mentioned.

Rowsell’s argument relies on deliberately misrepresenting what the traditional account actually is, to make it easier for him to undermine the traditional view:

“For people to believe that the Kelly Gang just randomly decided after months making the Armour and preparing for Glenrowan that they would just derail the Special Police Train, murder everyone and ride off into the sunset – makes zero sense to me”

“Simply derailing the Train to murder the constabulary and trackers, then ride off to hide in Queensland or South America or something is just ludicrous and illogical.”

Nobody, and I include Rowsell himself, has ever read, or ever written or ever believed that the Kelly gang “randomly decided” just to wreck a train, murder police and then “ride off into the sunset.” It would indeed be ludicrous and nonsensical, if that was what anyone claimed was Ned Kellys plan for Glenrowan…but it wasn’t ever proposed by anyone, anywhere to be the plan. Claiming that this distorted narrative is the position he is arguing against is dishonest and a sign of a bad faith actor.

 

ROWSELL GROSSLY MISREPRESENTS THE STRENGTH AND THE VOLUME OF THE EVIDENCE FOR THE TRADITIONAL VIEW

Stuart Rowsell has attempted to persuade people that the traditional view is based on almost no evidence:

• “All there is are a few newspaper articles with supposed quotes from Ned Kelly directly after the Glenrowan siege when Dr Nicolson had declared him near death and Father Gibney had given him last rites … “
  
  
• “What actual evidence do they have for the ‘derail and murder scenario’ – assumption and some boasts by Ned Kelly under the duress of concussion and his anti-authoritarian larrikin humour is all …”
  
  
• And this: “This whole narrative exposes the ‘doom train’ theory for what it is – just a mumble of words and hearsay that the reporter ‘claims were said’ …!!!

This idea of Rowsell’s that there is almost no ‘actual evidence’ for the traditional accounts, and that they are just ‘supposed quotes’ ‘hearsay ‘and a ‘mumble of words’ is nonsense. There is in fact a lot of very clear and unambiguous evidence, which will now be reviewed.

The most important evidence that Kellys plan was to wreck the train are Ned Kellys own words.

James Reardon told the Royal Commission what Kelly told him as he was forced at gunpoint to break up the line (Q7607) : “I expect a train from Benalla with a lot of police and black fellows, and I am going to kill all the —— ——.” I said, “For God’s sake, do not take me—I have got a large family to look after.” He said, “I have got several others up, but they are no use to me,” and I said, “They can do it without me,” and he said, “You must do it or I will shoot you,” 

Snr Constable Kelly was one of the people who spoke with Ned Kelly after capture. He was left in no doubt from what Ned Kelly told him that the gang was planning ‘to put on their armour, walk deliberately up to the train when it fell off the line and every living soul that escaped from the ruins they would have shot like dogs;’

Thomas Curnow also provided testimony under oath to the Royal Commission. He was in no doubt that Kellys plan was to wreck the train, and according to him, many others had the same impression:

Q17604 Was it Reardon that told you the line was taken up?.
Curnow: I cannot say that Reardon did not, for everybody spoke of it and it was a fact known to all. It was known to several I know and it was the topic of conversation that the line was torn up and they were going to wreck the train”.

Curnow was the man who was so appalled by what he heard that he very bravely managed to convince Kelly to let him go, and at great personal risk, ran down the line and stopped the train.

Father Gibney also spoke to Ned Kelly after he was caught. He thought Kelly was dying, and went to administer the Last Rites but instead reported that “I don’t think he IS dying (my emphasis) he is penitent and shows a very good disposition”. Gibney also said “I heard his confession which I shall not repeat. As I at first thought he was dying, I anointed him. Kelly freely confessed his intention of wrecking the train”

Because Ned Kellys words about wrecking the train and killing the police are lethal to Rowsells attempt to rewrite the history books, he resorts to a variety of deceits to discredit them. So for example when Rowsell refers to “just a mumble of words and hearsay that the reporter ‘claims were said’, and to ‘supposed quotes from Ned Kelly’  he wants people to believe that Police and Reporters were just making things up to frame Ned Kelly. He has no evidence for this.

The reality is that if Kelly had said there was going to be an armed hold up of the train and all the police were going to be imprisoned and held for ransom, there is no rational reason to suppose that wouldn’t be reported. That scenario on its own would be more than sensational, and so, there is no rational reason for Rowsell to suggest something else, something even more sensational would be invented and reported instead. Rowsell’s attempt to deny what Kelly was reported to have said by inventing a conspiracy theory that these reports were just ‘hearsay’ and ‘claims’ and ‘supposed quotes’ fabricated by journalists is absurd: there is no evidence for that, and no reason to believe it.

Another of the ways in which Rowsell attempts to discredit the reports of Ned Kelly talking about wrecking the train is by claiming that  they were all made after the siege and couldn’t possibly be accurate or relied on because they were uttered when Kelly was badly wounded, was ‘near death’ and was ‘concussed’ .That claim is demonstrably false.  As already demonstrated in the quotes from Reardon and Curnow, Kelly also talked about his plans BEFORE the siege and BEFORE he was injured, and he said the same things then as he said after the siege.

Secondly when you read what Kelly actually said after the siege, and find out what people who saw him then actually said about his physical and mental state, you don’t find what Rowsell wants you to find, the ramblings of a badly concussed, disordered and confused mind that was near death. What these reports reveal is that though weakened and exhausted, Kelly was not ‘near death’ and he wasn’t confused and disorientated by concussion but ‘bright eyed’. He gave a good account of himself and remembered numbers and lots of detail and the sequence of events, and even his own thoughts …and fatally for Rowsell’s theory, he made a ‘confession’ to the Catholic priest that he intended to wreck the train. Here is some of what was reported in the Brisbane Telegraph of July 5th 1880: “Tom Wright as well as the sisters kissed the wounded man and a brief conversation ensued, Ned Kelly having to a certain extent recovered from the exhaustion consequent on his wounds. At times his eyes were quite bright and although he was of course excessively weak, his remarkably powerful physique enabled him to talk rather freely”

The Report continues: “…. during the interview, he stated “I was at last surrounded by the police and only had a revolver with which I fired four shots: but it was no good. I had half a mind to shoot myself. I loaded my rifle but could not hold it after I was wounded. I had plenty of ammunition but it was no good to me. I got shot in the arm and told Byre and Dan so, I could have got off but when I saw them all pounding away I told Dan I would see it over and wait until morning”.

Father Gibneys testimony is another huge problem for Rowsell. He is quick to dismiss reporter’s words as just ‘claims’ when it suits him, but one would hope he accepts that the Priest was a reliable source who wouldn’t have lied when he reported Kellys confession that he intended to wreck the train. One can readily appreciate why Rowsell would attempt to dismiss that ‘confession’, but his speculation that Kelly was confused because of concussion and being near death and wouldn’t have known what he was talking about isn’t supported by the evidence. The confession was true.

 

And lastly, Rowsell lets the cat out of the bag with this statement: “Stating to various townspeople during that Sunday, that derailing the Train to murder the police, was the purpose behind Glenrowan, may simply have been a bluff, to hide the real operation and keep the townspeople in line. ”  This statement shows that all along Rowsell was aware that Kelly was telling people in the Inn well before the train arrived that he was planning to wreck it and kill the police. Despite that he cynically and dishonestly tried to persuade everyone that Kelly only said those things when the Siege had ended, when he was ‘concussed’ and ‘near death’.

 

Apart from Kellys own words, the other major support for the traditional view are Kellys own actions, specifically wrecking the line and imprisoning people to stop news of the line being wrecked from getting to police.

The track was lifted at the most dangerous part of the line between Glenrowan and Wangaratta –  on an elevated section and on a dangerous curve several rails and their sleepers were tossed down the embankment : a more ominous signal of intent could hardly be imagined, quite apart from Ned Kellys own advice to Reardon about what it was done for. It was also reported that the break in the line was concealed with branches cut from nearby trees. Nobody has ever denied that a derailment there would have been catastrophic.

For the train to be wrecked, the fact of the broken line had to be kept secret – which was precisely why the break was camouflaged and why Kelly initially attempted to rip up the rails himself in the dark of night. However, when he couldn’t, and he was forced to enlist the help of others, they had to be imprisoned to stop the secret getting out.

In fact, the entire purpose of imprisoning people in the Ann Jones Inn was to prevent the secret getting out. Kelly wanted the police to know the Gang had emerged from hiding, but he didn’t want them to know the line had been sabotaged and they were being lured into a trap. What was done to the line, as Ian Jones himself noted in his famous biography, would have been vast over-reach if, as Rowsell contends, the line break was simply meant to deter the police train from continuing past Glenrowan. In terms of forensic evidence, the line break was a smoking gun.

 

ROWSELLS CLAIM

In a FB post in May 2025 called ‘A Sunday Read’ the ‘true plan’ according to Rowsell was this:

1. bail up the Special Police Train at the Glenrowan Station –
2. use the armour to take the police hostage,
3. signal the armed sympathisers with the two rockets to rally to the Train,
4. rally the armed sympathisers into a guerrilla force to corral the police into a shed to begin hostage negotiations for the release of the Kelly family and friends in gaol.
5. repair the rails,
6. commandeer the Train with the Armoured Kelly Gang and a party of sympathisers to take the Train to
7. Wangaratta,
8. Beechworth and
9. Benalla to
10. rob the Banks and
11. blow up the police stations with the black powder explosive. From Benalla the extended Gang
12. take the police horses back to Glenrowan after
13. a telegraph to Melbourne demanding hostage negotiations for the Kelly family and friends in Gaol and
14. blowing up the rail line.
15. From Glenrowan the Gang could hold it for weeks in a stockade
16. and with the money from the Bank Robberies pay for the armed guerrilla uprising across North East Victoria for Selector and Settler Land Law rights and potentially an independent constitutional democracy

Earlier this year Rowsell also wrote “I always believed a Train load of the Kelly Gang and a guerrilla force of sympathisers heading to Melbourne in an attempted coup was the final part of the plan”.

Most people will read this list and be asking themselves “Where the hell did he get all that from?”. The answer is that he made almost all of it up: there is no documentary support for virtually all of it. There is no evidence of a sympathiser guerrilla army. Nothing was ever said by Ned Kelly or anyone else about Settler Land law Rights, an independent Consititional Democracy or a Coup in Melbourne. Nobody knows why Rockets were fired.

Rowsells answer is “The Condemned Cell Correspondence letters lay out what Ned Kelly had in mind in 1880” .

OK so lets look at the Condemned Cell letters, of which there were four. The first one (Nov 1^st) makes no mention of Glenrowan or any related plans. It’s actually a copy of something that was printed in the Age newspaper three months earlier that purported to be a statement of Ned Kellys but was dismissed as a puff piece written for him by his Solicitor David Gaunson. Never-the-less, according to Ian Jones it was ‘a genuine expression of his views’…. but that’s highly debatable.

The second Condemned cell letter (Nov 3^rd) also makes no mention of Glenrowan or any related plans. It begins with Kellys preposterous claim that if he had been served with warrants for horse stealing “they could not possibly have procured a conviction.”  Next Kelly discusses the ‘Fitzpatrick incident’ claiming at one point “I can prove I never was seen nor never was in the locality where the alleged offence took place”. That statement is a lie. The rest of the letter is an attempt to rewrite what happened at Stringybark Creek. It includes a claim that is a huge exaggeration: “We had a house, two miles of fencing, twenty acres of ground cleared for the purpose of growing mangle wursels and barley for the purpose of distilling whisky”. Twenty acres?? Two miles of fencing?

In the 3^rd letter (November 5^th) with less than a week left to live, Kelly finally turns his attention to Glenrowan, announcing that the plan wasn’t to wreck the train as he had been telling everyone who would listen a few months before, but to stop it. This is the first and only time this claim was ever made by Kelly or by anyone else.

“I then bailed up Mrs Jones’ Hotel, then Mr Stanistreet the stationmaster, and asked him if he could stop a special train with police and black trackers on. He said he could stop a passenger train, but would not guarantee to stop a special train with police and blacktrackers exactly where I wanted it. So then I bailed up the platelayers and overseer and ordered them to pull up the line a quarter of a mile past the station, so as the train could not go any further. My intention was to have the stationmaster to flash the danger light on the platform so as the stop the train, and he was to tell the police to leave their firearms and horses in the train and walk out with their hands over their heads, and their lives would be spared. Also to inform them that it was useless them fighting as me and my companions were in full armour and we could take the train and everyone in it; that the line was pulled up in front of them and I had a tin of powder behind them. So that if they attempted to return I would have blown the line up there as well. This was my first intention, so as to capture the leaders of the police and take them into the bush and allow the superintendent to write to the head department and inform them if they sent any more Police after me or try to rescue him, I would shoot him, and that I intended to keep them prisoners till the release of my mother, Skillion and Williamson”

So, the plan according to the Condemned cell letter was for the line to be pulled up just past Glenrowan and for the ‘powder’ to be set behind to thwart any attempt to return, for the stationmaster to stop the train with the ‘danger light’, for police to surrender after a show of arms and for their lives to be spared, and for the prisoners to be released after his mother Skillion and Williamson were released. No mention of killing anyone. No mention of using the train to rob banks. No mention of imprisoning ordinary citizens. Nothing about rockets. Nothing about a guerrilla army. Nothing about blowing up police stations. Nothing about blowing up the railway. Nothing about telegraphing demands. Nothing about “heading to Melbourne in an attempted coup”(Rowsells claim).

There are big problems with this description, the first being that Stanistreets account of what Kelly said to him is completely different. Stanistreet said only a few days after the siege that Kelly ordered him not to give any signals, and Steve Hart was told to shoot him if he did. (South Australian Advertiser 3 July 1880, page 6) So who was lying? The known liar or the person speaking under oath?

The second problem is that Kelly then wrote “But subsequently I varied my plans.” He then talks about taking people hostage at the Inn, bailing up Const Bracken and this: “Then I let a man go to stop the train about a mile below the railway station and opposite the police barracks and to tell them that they were in the barracks.”  A little further on he wrote “The reason I differed from the first plan is I wanted the man that stopped the train to have the reward, as I heard it was to be done away with in three days.” This extraordinary claim is at complete odds with Curnow’s statements given under oath, which was that he had to trick Kelly into letting him go, that he was in mortal fear of his own life the entire time and so was his family, and let’s not forget the famous line attributed to Kelly, who thought Curnow was going home to sleep: “Don’t dream too loud”. So again, who was lying? The known liar or the person speaking under oath?

Kelly now mentions a plan to return in the train  ‘back along the line’ – obviously to Benalla – and robbing the Bank; no mention of the Banks at Wangaratta or Beechworth. And then there’s this this pair of preposterous excuses for not taking possession of the train: “When the train stopped at the station I was opposite on horseback. I jumped off in a hurry to take possession of the train when a bolt broke in my armour which necessitated need to repair it. This gave the police time to get in front of the hotel and fire into the people. 

When I heard the screams of the females I thought they had one of my companions in the gatekeeper’s house, as I took it to be Mrs. Stanistreet that was screaming so instead of taking possession of the train, as I had intended, I went to their assistance.” Nobody ever reported Kelly visiting the stationmasters house after the Train arrived. Everybody DID report that Kelly was at the Inn when the Police rushed it.

 

After this, Kelly gives an account of what happened at Glenrowan, but its inaccurate, rambling and disjointed and contains lies such as this one:  “neither me nor my companions fired a single shot until after I was wounded, which was the third volley from the police,”. Numerous witnesses testified to the Gang firing first which was when Hare was wounded. So again, who was lying? The known liar or the person speaking under oath?

 

The last Condemned cell letter, written the day before Kelly was hanged, mentions a diverse range of topics that included Fitzpatrick, SBC, his trial and Glenrowan, only to more or less double down on what he said about it in the third letter. He made the silly claim that the armour made shooting at him pointless and so, as nobody could be a threat to him while wearing it, he could disarm guards and rob the bank without having to shoot anyone. Had he forgotten that Byrne was killed and Kelly himself was brought down while wearing the armour? Had he forgotten that while wearing it and shooting at police he didn’t hit a single one of them other than Hare in the first volley fired from the veranda? He seemed to be in complete denial and have no insight at all into the reality of what happened at Glenrowan, which was a massive and complete debacle for him and his family and friends.

 

There are two important observations about the Condemned Cell letters that need to be recognised: the first is that they were written when Kelly was on death row, knowing he had only a few days left to live if he couldn’t somehow change the minds of the authorities.  In other words Kelly wrote them in a state of desperation, he had nothing to lose and so why wouldn’t he say or do anything to try to save himself? 

The other observation is that the letters contradict many of Kellys own earlier statements, they contradict the sworn testimony of many credible witnesses, and they include obvious lies and exaggerations and misrepresentations. Overall, because of those two things they would be useless as exhibits in a Court setting, having almost no credibility, and accordingly so does Rowsell’s advocacy for what is contained in them. Rowsell cites Kenneally as a separate support for the theory, but its very clear when you read Kenneally he is merely recycling the proposals made by Kelly in the Condemned Cell letters. Kenneally adds no new or independently sourced information to the story.

There are many other obvious reasons for dismissing the stop the train theory as a baseless fantasy. One is that it required dynamite to be set on the line to act as a deterrent to the train being reversed away from Glenrowan once it had been stopped…. but no attempt was ever made to put the dynamite there – it remained at McDonells Hotel. Another reason is that Rowsells theory required someone to stop the train but even though he had said it was his intention that Stanistreet ‘flash the danger light so as to stop the train at the station’  no arrangements were made to do this.  Kelly claims in the condemned cell letter that he sent Curnow to do it and to collect the reward.  Rowsell has no choice but to accept that to be the case,  which in turn compels him to also believe that Curnow was NOT the courageous Hero of Glenrowan everyone else has made him out to be but a disgraced man whose testimony to the RC was gross and serial perjury. Another serious weakness is Rowsells claim that: “Nothing about the derailment makes sense, the Kelly Gang had nothing to gain”. In fact, as Ian Jones pointed out, wrecking the train made perfect sense for a tiny group of armed rebels wanting to make “a decisive first strike” against a numerically vastly superior Police force. The odds were against the Gang but a train wreck and police massacre could have potentially tipped the scales in their favour. By contrast, attempting to stop the train and then disarm and keep hostage potentially scores of police would have been far more dangerous. And a final reason to dismiss Rowsell’s stop the train theory is that to accept it, one has to believe an outrageous conspiracy theory, a theory that Reardon, Cst Kelly, Curnow, Gibney and many others all lied under oath but the known liar,  horse thief and police murderer Kelly was telling the truth.

 

In summary, Ned Kellys own words, and the things that he did and the things he didn’t do before during and after the confrontation at Glenrowan overwhelmingly support the idea that he planned to wreck the train at Glenrowan and kill or capture any survivors. Multiple credible witnesses said the same thing under oath, and one of them was a Catholic priest who heard Kellys confession.

Months later, in desperation Kelly attempted to rewrite the history of what his plan was, to deny the extreme brutality of it and to pretend it was something a lot less sinister. But nobody believed him.  No rational person could reasonably accept Rowsells proposition that all the witnesses who testified otherwise were liars who conspired to promote a false version of what Kelly planned, a plan that he only ever revealed in a series of deeply flawed unreliable and implausible documents produced under the extreme duress of imminent execution by hanging. Every Kelly scholar since, other than Kenneally, an extreme Kelly admirer, and Stuart Rowsell, a modern-day Kelly fanatic, recognised the rewrite for what it was: a fantasy. They looked at the evidence and the facts and said of the rewrite “Yeah, nah!