It still retains the charm of the book and the film. You do have to use your imagination and the narration by the actors to provide the necessary link to the story. Obviously this is a stage play that was filmed live for a screen showing but it works well. 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. The Railway Children is a childrens book by Edith Nesbit, originally serialised in The London Magazine during 1905 and published in book form in the same year. The children and their mother, now impoverished move to rural Yorkshire near a railway line. 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 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. When Father is taken away unexpectedly, Roberta, Peter, Phyllis and their mother have to leave their comfortable life in London.

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

The Railway Children by E. Nesbit