The Railway Children

"Hurry up," said Peter, "or we shall miss the 9.15!" The Railway Children is a children's book by Edith Nesbit, originally serialised in The London Magazine during 1905 and published in book form the following year. The story concerns a family who move from London to 'The Three Chimneys', a house near a railway, after the father, who works at the Foreign Office, is imprisoned after being falsely accused of spying. The children cope with their adverse circumstances by forming a bond with their new home and community. They develop a deep love for the nearby railway, especially the train they nickname the Green Dragon. Each day, they appear on the platform to wave at this train as it passes, and a passenger they nickname the old gentleman waves back to them. The children forge friendships with the railway employees, including the Station Master and the Porter, Mr. Perks. During their time in the countryside, they have several adventures, including preventing a train accident, rescuing a baby from a burning barge on the canal, and aiding an injured boy in a railway tunnel. Although poor, the children seek to perform acts of kindness for others whenever they can, while Mother maintains her fierce independence by supporting the family through constantly writing for various publications. The theme of an innocent man being falsely imprisoned for espionage and finally vindicated might have been influenced by the Dreyfus Affair, which was a prominent worldwide news item a few years before the book was written. The Russian exile, persecuted by the Tsars for writing "a beautiful book about poor people and how to help them" and subsequently helped by the children, was most likely an amalgam of the real-life dissidents Sergius Stepniak and Peter Kropotkin who were both friends of the author. The book refers to the then current Russo-Japanese War and to attitudes taken by British people to the war. This dates the setting to the spring, summer and early autumn of 1905.