Five-minute digest
The Railway Children
Summary
The Railway Children tells how Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis lose their comfortable London life and find friends, work and courage beside a country railway line. One evening, just after Peter's birthday, two men call, Father goes away with them, and Mother will say only that he has gone on business and that the children must not ask. Soon the family moves to a small house called Three Chimneys, near a station and a tunnel, with no servants and little money. Mother shuts herself up writing stories to sell, and the children, left to themselves, fall in love with the railway. Peter takes coal from the station yard and is caught by the Station Master, who forgives him. They wave every morning to the 9.15 and send their love to Father by it, and an old gentleman in a first-class carriage waves back. When Mother falls ill with influenza, the children send him a list of what the doctor ordered, and he sends a hamper. Bobbie climbs into an engine to ask the driver to mend Peter's broken toy engine, and the driver and fireman do it. A Russian writer, sent to Siberia for a book about the poor, turns up at the station, and the old gentleman finds his lost wife and child. After a landslide blocks the line, the girls tear their red flannel petticoats into flags and stop a train, and the railway company gives each child a gold watch. They save a bargeman's baby from a burning canal boat, organise birthday gifts from the whole village for the proud porter Perks, and help a boy in a red jersey, Jim, who has broken his leg in the tunnel during a paperchase. He turns out to be the old gentleman's grandson, and he is nursed at Three Chimneys. Meanwhile Bobbie finds an old newspaper and learns the secret: Father has been convicted of selling state secrets and sentenced to five years' penal servitude. Mother tells her he is innocent and that the two of them must be brave together. Bobbie writes to the old gentleman, who works to prove the truth. In the last chapter the passengers of the 9.15 wave newspapers at the children, the village greets Bobbie with strange kindness, and Father steps off the 11.54. The book was serialized in The London Magazine in 1905 and published in 1906 with illustrations by C. E. Brock.
Top Lessons
Bearing a burden together
When Bobbie learns that Father is in prison, she keeps the secret from Peter and Phyllis so they need not suffer, and shares it only with Mother. Nesbit shows a child growing up by carrying sorrow quietly for the sake of others, while still finding help from a trusted friend.
Courage in an emergency
When the landslide falls, the children think quickly, tear up their red petticoats, and stand on the line waving until the train stops. Bobbie faints afterward. The book shows bravery as doing the needed thing while afraid.
Gifts without charity's sting
Perks is offended when the village sends him birthday presents, because he thinks he is being treated as a beggar. When Bobbie shows him the kind notes of friends who remember his past kindnesses, he is proud and happy. Nesbit shows that a gift must honour the person who receives it.
Kindness to strangers
Mother takes in the sick Russian when no one at the station can understand him, and the children help him find his family. The prayer for prisoners and captives teaches the children that other people's sorrows are close to their own.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“They were not railway children to begin with.”
“Dears, when you say your prayers, I think you might ask God to show His pity upon all prisoners and captives.”
“How lucky we DID put on our red flannel petticoats!”
“But charity's what I never did abide”
“We two must help each other to be brave.”
“Oh, what useful things flannel petticoats are!”
“Take our love to Father!”
Frequently cited
“Oh! my Daddy, my Daddy!”
Medical Lens
Illness and injury recur in an Edwardian country setting with a single local doctor. Mother's influenza brings Dr Forrest, whose list of ordered foods and comforts the poor family cannot afford; the children's appeal to the old gentleman produces a hamper. The Russian exile arrives worn out in mind and body after Siberia. Jim's broken leg is set at Three Chimneys rather than in a hospital, with the children listening in distress to the sounds from the room above, and Mother nurses him. Bobbie's petticoat cushion and the children's game of bone-setting reflect a home-nursing world. Dr Forrest is drawn as kind, frank and not well off himself. None of this is clinical, but it is a fair picture of general practice and home care before the National Health Service.
- Chapter III, The old gentleman
Dr Forrest diagnoses Mother's influenza and lists what she needs; the children ask the old gentleman for it.
- Chapter V, Prisoners and captives
The doctor sees the Russian exile and says he is worn out, mind and body.
- Chapters XII-XIII
Jim, injured in the tunnel, is brought to Three Chimneys; the doctor sets the leg and Mother nurses him.