[1] The setting is thought to be inspired by Edith's walks to Grove Park nature reserve, close to where she lived on Baring Road.

[2] 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, Roberta (nicknamed "Bobbie"), Peter and Phyllis, befriend an old gentleman who regularly takes the 9:15am train near their home; he is eventually able to help prove their father's innocence and the family is reunited.

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.

3: "'Yes,' said the Porter, 'I knowed a young gent as used to take down the numbers of every single one he seed; in a green note-book with silver corners it was, owing to his father being very well-to-do in the wholesale stationery.'

In 1991 it was adapted for Radio 5 by Marcy Kahan and produced by John Taylor, starring Paul Copley, Timothy Bateson and Victoria Carling.

In 2021 BBC Radio 4 broadcast The Saving of Albert Perks, a monologue by Bernard Cribbins in which the now adult Roberta returns to Oakworth with two Jewish refugee children who have escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport.

Jenny Agutter returns as an older Bobbie, now living in Oakworth with her daughter (played by Sheridan Smith) and her grandson, who take in a trio of children who have been evacuated.

The adaptation starred Sarah Quintrell, Colin Tarrant and Marshall Lancaster (2008 only), and featured a Stirling Single steam locomotive (GNR 4-2-2 No.

1 of 1870) which, while not actually in steam, entered the stage on the tracks originally leading into the York Goods Station, in which the 'Station Hall' section of the museum is now situated.

A temporary 1,000-seat theatre was built at the base of the CN Tower, around the railway tracks—with the audience seated on either side—and it featured the vintage British steam locomotive No.

[20] In the last episode of the first season of British crime series Happy Valley (2014) a schoolteacher is reading part of the ending of The Railway Children, after which a schoolboy wants to find his father, though the latter has been warned of as being a criminal.