The Railway Children

Although exiled to the countryside due to their father’s imprisonment, the children still maintain links to their old lives through the presence of the railway station, and in particular the Green Dragon that is their favorite train. In the novel, the countryside is a place not only of exile, but of healing. The country is where the children learn to develop emotionally and discover how it is not wealth or social status that makes a life meaningful, but friendship and moral integrity. The railway helps them maintain a sense of their old identity while also enabling them to adjust to their new lives through leading them to new friendships with characters such as the old gentleman and Mr. Perks. Because of the railway, the countryside becomes a welcoming place where the children can create both a new sense of home and of themselves. It is significant that, when the family reunion finally does take place, it is the railway station that serves as the meeting-place between Bobbie and her father—old lives and new lives are finally and fully reconnected, and the train that has brought their father back to them will presumably soon take the united family back to London once again.