The Railway Children

The Railway Children is a novel by E. Nesbit, published in 1906. The book is set in the London suburbs and then in the country, and the move between the two locations is the event that starts the story.

The family's circumstances change abruptly when the father is taken away without explanation. The children and their mother move to a cottage called Three Chimneys beside a railway line, and the railway becomes the centre of their lives: they befriend the station master and Perks the porter, and they exchange waves with a regular passenger they call the Old Gentleman, who becomes important to the plot.

The mystery of the father's absence runs underneath the episodes, and the book's reputation rests on how ordinary the adventures are, with a tunnel, a train, a coal heap and a boat rather than anything fantastical. It was adapted into a British family film directed by Lionel Jeffries in 1970, and that adaptation, which moved the setting to 1905, is how a large share of later readers came to the story. The question the book keeps returning to is plain, and the children can only put it to adults who will not answer it: where their father has gone, and whether he is coming back.