Railway Children by Edith Nesbit. When Father goes away with two strangers one evening, the lives of Roberta, Peter and Phyllis are shattered. They and their mother have to move from their comfortable London home to go and live in a simple country cottage, where Mother writes books to make ends meet. However, they soon come to love the railway that runs near their cottage, and they make a habit of waving to the Old Gentleman who rides on it. They befriend the porter, Perks, and through him learn railway lore and much else. They have many adventures, and when they save a train from disaster, they are helped by the Old Gentleman to solve the mystery of their father's disappearance. Her child characters were remarkable in her day because they are so entirely human. They are intelligent, vain, aggressive, humorous, witty, cruel, compassionate... in fact, they are like adults. --Gore Vidal They were not railway children to begin with... They did not guess then how they would grow to love the railway, and how soon it would become the centre of their new life, nor what wonders and changes it would bring them. English author Edith Nesbit s impressive body of work includes poems, plays, novels, and even ghost stories, however, she is best known for her beloved children s adventure stories, published under the name E. Nesbit. Among Nesbit s best-known works are The Story of the Treasure-Seekers, The Railway Children, The Wouldbegoods and Five Children and It. Nesbit s novels departed from the children s literary tradition of fantasy-worlds popularized by Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame, and instead focused on the adventures to be had from real-life experiences. Nesbit s work inspired other writers like C. S. Lewis, P. L Travers, and J. K. Rowling, and many of her stories have been adapted for film and television. In addition to writing, Nesbit was an activist and co-founded the Fabian Society, a socialist group that provided the foundation for the modern British Labour Party. Nesbit died in 1924.