Question
If the four keys were kept in England, how did they open the safes at the other end in Crimea?
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Duplicate keys seems to be the easiest answer.
BUT - I would imagine that the actual boxes of gold would be removed from the safes (which logically were bolted down in the goods van) and then placed under military guard for further transport to the Crimea.
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Your right Zipper69, in the film it is clearly stated that the safe is not opened until the train reaches it's destination (can't remember where off the top of my head), so I presume the gold was loaded into some other security device onboard the ship it travelled on to reach the Crimea.
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Major bank transactions were conducted in gold bullion. The bullion wouldn't be distributed to the soldiers directly; it would be deposited into a Crimean bank, and then dispersed to the army paymaster in common currency denominations. Did you think banks made huge transactions between themselves in shilling coins? Perhaps it's harder to understand in these days when there is no longer any gold standard and major financial transactions take place in electrons stored on computers, but large monetary exchanges a hundred and fifty years ago were done in bullion.
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