It is one of the most heartwarming moments in film: Jenny Agutter running towards her father at the end of The Railway Children and exclaiming: “Daddy! My Daddy!”
However, a new version of Edith Nesbit’s beloved tale, written by Jacqueline Wilson and set in the modern day, has given that scene a more downbeat tone by relocating it to a prison visiting hall.
Whereas the father in the original story was falsely imprisoned for spying, Wilson decided to make her version of the character guilty of fraud.
His daughter, Phoebe, greets him with: “Dad! Oh Dad!” in the visiting centre of a grim prison building. They embrace for a moment but are then separated by a warden who tells them: “Minimum contact, please. You know the rules.”
There is a happy ending, as the father is released early for good behaviour and becomes a campaigner for prison reform.
Ms Wilson wrote in The Telegraph that she had re-read Nesbit’s book and “realised it wasn’t as realistic” as she had remembered.
She has also changed the character of the mother in the family to make her “less of a paragon, more of a real woman under stress”.
Story essentials the same
Ms Wilson has stuck to the essentials of the story, with a family of two girls and a boy moving to a remote cottage with their mother.
They discover a nearby steam railway and are taken under the wing of a kindly stationmaster. The narrator is the youngest child in the family, Phoebe. Her brother, Perry, is autistic.
As with most Wilson books, the story is littered with modern references: there are mentions of selfies, YouTube and wifi.
The author said she hoped her book would encourage children to discover Nesbit’s original. In 2012 she re-imagined another Nesbit classic as Four Children and It, which was later made into a film featuring Russell Brand.
Another Railway Children project is in the works, as a sequel to the 1970 film is set for release next year.
Ms Agutter will reprise her role as Bobbie, and it will once again be filmed on West Yorkshire’s Keighley & Worth Valley Railway.