The Railway Children

This is a filmed version of Mike Kenny and Damian Cruden's stage adaptation that took place at the National Railway Museum in Yorkshire. It also features the original locomotive from the much loved 1970 film.

The 1970 film starring Jenny Agutter was regular viewing in our household when we were children and we even read the book at school so it was only right to watch this stage version with my own children.

E Nesbit's The Railway Children is a classic book of three children, Roberta, Phyllis and Peter who live a rather privileged life with servants in London until one day their father who works for the Foreign Office is imprisoned for spying.

The children and their mother, now impoverished move to rural Yorkshire near a railway line. Here they hang around the railway line and become the Railway Children as they deal with helping out others and in turn a kindly old gentleman who they see riding on a train every day helps them out by finding out what has happened to their father.

Obviously this is a stage play that was filmed live for a screen showing but it works well. You do have to use your imagination and the narration by the actors to provide the necessary link to the story. It still retains the charm of the book and the film.