Hello, my name is Pete Coleman and I would like to tell you a little bit about the story of the "Railway Children" by Edith Nesbit.
Click here for a short summary of the plot of "The Railway Children".
Click here to find out if "The Railway Children" really existed.
Click here to find out in which part of the country the story was set.
Click here to find out if the Railway Children had a Surname.
One evening after dinner when Father is enjoying his after-dinner cigar,
the family are discussing the possibility of mending Peter’s toy steam engine,
which has suffered an unfortunate accident, there comes a knock at the front
door.
The Maid calls Father into his study. Although the children cannot hear what is
being said, they can hear voices that are raised in anger. When the shouting
finally stops, Father leaves the house with two official looking gentlemen, and
their Mother looks extremely worried.
Mother tells the children that Father has had to go away on
business and that she does not know when he will be coming home again. There
follows some weeks of misery and anxiety for the children. Mother is almost
always out, coming home late and tired. The children make a promise to each
other to be on their best behaviour and not to ask Mother any questions about
her obvious sadness.
One morning, Mother seems to be more cheerful and tells the
children that they are going to move to a "darling little house" in the country.
The children are relieved to see Mother in a happier mood, but are still aware
that something is very wrong.
Mother and the three children move to "Three Chimneys", an
isolated cottage deep in the sleepy countryside. Mother cannot afford to send
the children to school, and so the children find themselves with a whole summer
of freedom to look forward to. Mother tells the children that they will have to
play at being poor. Mother always seems to be busy now, she is writing stories
to sell to the magazines of the day. After living in the hustle and bustle of
London, and with the countryside being so quiet, the children naturally enough
find themselves being attracted towards the only real source of interest around,
and that is the railway. They come to know, and make friends with the porter at
the station. His name is "Perks" and the children spend many a happy afternoon
in the porter’s office drinking tea and chatting to him about the railway.
As the story unfolds, the children find themselves being
caught up in many exciting adventures involving the railway and also the nearby
canal. They make new friends at the station and in the nearby village. Every
morning the children wave at the 9:15 train, they call this train "The Green
Dragon" and they send their love to Father by it. They make one particular new
friend; an old gentleman that rides on the "Green Dragon" every day, he turns
out to be a rather special old gentleman, and he holds the solution to Father’s
mysterious disappearance and eventual happy reunion with his family.....
The part of the country that the story of
the Railway Children was set in is..............
Well, to be honest I don't think that we will ever truly know
the answer to that question. Edith Nesbit quite plainly used differing
geographical and topographical elements throughout the story to suit the moment.
She was never beyond completely ignoring the fact that something was "quite
impossible" (i.e. red flannel petticoats in the early 1900's), so that she
could turn it to use in her stories.
There have been several quite eloquent theories published as
to where the Railway Children was set, with one or two of them being quite
bizarre, and various arguments have been forwarded to support thier theories and
claims. However, my opinion, and I must stress it is only my opinion, is
that the setting for the Railway Children is an amalgam (mix) of several places
that Edith visited and came to love. Whilst some of the topographical and
geological clues in the story would indicate a setting in the north of the
country (and Edith loved some of the wilder areas of the north, she had visited
her sister on the north Yorkshire moors, staying at a house nearby that was
called "Three Chimneys"), some of the place names would indicate a setting in
the south-eastern part of the country i.e. "Maidbridge" = Maidstone/Tonbridge in
Kent, both areas that Edith enjoyed visiting, and
then some of the railway equipment, terminology and dialects would seem to
indicate a setting in the western part of the country, and so it goes on.
In Edith Nesbit's original story the family's surname was never mentioned. However, in the 1970 EMI film adaption the surname of "Waterbury" was used (which was actually the name of the watchmakers who made the watches that the children received from the railway company in recognition of thier bravery in saving a train from disaster)!