The Railway Children Return

Siblings 14-year-old Lily, 11-year-old Pattie and 7-year-old Ted Watts are evacuated from Manchester to the village of Oakworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where they are greeted by Bobbie Waterbury, her schoolmistress daughter Annie and her 13-year-old son Thomas.

That evening a lone enemy aircraft drops a bomb on the town cemetery, causing Lily to fall as she brings a first aid kit and other supplies to Abe.

When she confronts him about it, Abe reveals that he is actually the same age as Lily and that he is trying to return home after seeing how the US Army treat his fellow black soldiers who are often beaten by the Military Police, despite the town's inhabitants refusing the US authorities' request to impose a colour bar in the local pub.

Lily stops this idea immediately, and calls Thomas out on his ignorance of the realities of the world, revealing that their father was also killed in combat.

Thomas rallies Pattie, Ted and the rest of the local and evacuee children to create banners warning the train to stop, just as Bobbie and her siblings had done forty years earlier.

At the time of filming, "Bahamas" was in British Railways green livery and the overlaid, correct LMS decals (BR was only formed in 1948) can be easily observed on the tender.

43924 which was also in British Railways identity and wore plain black livery had its BR crest overlaid with LMS decals and its 43924 number changed to 3924.

To celebrate the film's release, Hornby Railways has produced a OO scale model of 43924 LMS Class 4F in special packaging.

The website's critics' consensus reads, "Fuel[l]ed by nostalgia, Railway Children reaches its destination in middling yet amiable fashion.