Trivia

1. Director and writer Porter based the film on true events: a 1900 train robbery pulled off by Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch near Table Rock, Wyoming. The gang stopped the Union Pacific's No. 3 train forced the conductor to uncouple the passenger cars from the rest of the train, and then blew up the post car's safe to escape with $5,000 in cash. Unlike the desperadoes in the film, Butch and his crew got away with their crime.
--Source: USA by Rail, Page 8

The movie used a number of innovative techniques including cross cutting, camera movement, double exposure composite editing and on location shooting, although it was heavily influenced by Frank Mottershaw's earlier British film A Daring Daylight Burglary.
--Source: Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice, Page 41

This film was the American film industry's first great box–office hit. By Christmas week of 1903, all of the major exhibition services in New York City owned copies of the film. By 1908 it had earned $2 million.

In 1904, when Siegmund Lubin's company released a close remake of The Great Train Robbery under the same title just seven months after the original movie was released, it became the first remake in motion picture history.