Spare us the preaching: The Railway Children Return reviewed

It doesn’t help the cause of The Railway Children Return that the original 1970 Railway Children film is currently on iPlayer. Just to test my capacity to cry, having emerged dry-eyed from the new one, I came home and re-watched the original. Yup. The 2022 sequel has three scenes of the new cohort of Railway Children – three second world war evacuees from Manchester, Lily, Pattie and Ted – waving goodbye to their soldier father as he departs for war, in the fog, never to return. Violins soar. Eyes remain dry. The 1970 film has just one scene of Daddy arriving home, in the fog of a steam train, and it still makes me sob every time.

So is a return more moving than a departure? It certainly can be, but you have to live through the desolation first. The original film was carried by the young Jenny Agutter, whose beautiful speaking voice as narrator trying to make sense of her father’s disappearance captivated the world. ‘We were not the Railway Children to begin with,’ were her opening lines, straight from E. Nesbit, and we were swept off our feet.

It’s a good idea to have three Manchester children holed up in Yorkshire this time round. The three child actors, Beau Gadsdon, Eden Hamilton and Zac Cudby, look adorable in their berets and Fair Isle jerseys and say their lines well at the evacuee-selecting, nit-checking ceremony in the village hall. (‘Will you take ooz?’ ‘No one’s chosen ooz. We’re too many.’) And, blissfully, Jenny Agutter, as Bobbie – yes, the very same Bobbie, now a granny! – is the one who takes them in, along with her daughter Annie (Sheridan Smith) and sweet grandson Thomas (Austin Haynes).