The Railway Children

The Railway Children

Director:   Catherine Morshead

Cast:

  1. Jemima Rooper, Jack Blumenau,
  2. Clare Thomas, Jenny Agutter,
  3. Michael Kitchen, Gregor Fisher,
  4. Richard Attenborough

The Railway Children is a 1970 British drama film based on the novel of the same name by E. Nesbit.

The story follows the adventures of the Waterbury children, who are forced to move with their mother (Dinah Sheridan) from a luxurious Edwardian villa in the London suburbs to "Three Chimneys", a house near the fictional 'Great Northern and Southern Railway' in Yorkshire, as their father (Iain Cuthbertson), who works at the Foreign Office, has been imprisoned as a result of being wrongly accused of selling state secrets.

The three children, Roberta (Bobbie) (Jenny Agutter), Phyllis (Sally Thomsett) and Peter (Gary Warren), find amusement in watching the trains on the nearby railway line and waving to the passengers. They become friendly with Albert Perks (Bernard Cribbins), the station porter, and with the Old Gentleman (William Mervyn) who regularly takes the 9:15 down train. Meanwhile, to earn money to survive during her husband's absence, Mother writes and sells stories to magazines.

They have many adventures, including saving the lives of dozens of passengers by alerting a train to a landslide, rescuing a Russian dissident, Mr Szczepansky, and uniting him with his family, and caring for Jim, the grandson of the Old Gentleman, who is injured whilst participating in a paper chase. Finally, Bobbie discovers the truth of her father's absence and appeals to the Old Gentleman for his help. He is eventually able to help prove their father's innocence, and the family is reunited. 1

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