On the Trail of the GN&SR

[1165Valour]

I'll go ahead and warn you, this thread is largely an exercise in pure fantasy.

 

I want to take a look at the "Great Northern and Southern Railway," the fictitious railway featured in the 1970 film adaptation of The Railway Children. Edith Nesbit doesn't give a specific location for the country railway, but the film places it squarely in Yorkshire.

 

This makes me wonder, what does the rest of the GN&SR look like? As we have so little to go on, everyone will have a different vision of it, but the Yorkshire locale makes me think.

 

The GER had been looking for a way to the coal fields to the north, and this eventually resulted in the creation of the GN&GE Joint. In this universe, perhaps the lines that formed the GN&GE (and perhaps some lines the NER gobbled up historically) are instead an independent company?

[relaxinghobby]

After Father was thrown in jail for espionage Mother took the children north from London IIRC from the book.

Their rented farm house was somewhere hilly, consider the adventure with the runners broken leg in the tunnel under the hill.

The landslide when the cutting collapsed onto the track.

In the book there was also a busy canal, see the adventure with the baby and fire on the canal boat.

The regular train carrying the Old  Gentleman every morning to his office in a major town.

What were the accents of the local people, Perks' accent may not be local as railway servants moved around to peruse their carrier paths.

West Yorkshire would be a good location for the above geography.

Did E. S. Nesbit the real Mother base her story on the area she knew and lived in?

In a fiction battle between authors with some autobiography in their books, would E.S.Nesbit or J.K.Rawling win.

[billbedford]

According to Wikipedia:

 

Quote

After Mary's death, Edith and her mother settled for three years at Halstead Hall in Halstead in north-west Kent, a location which later inspired The Railway Children (this distinction has also been claimed by the Derbyshire town of New Mills).[4]

 

[wainwright1]

So the Bluebell Railway version was not too far off track !

 

Allow a bit of southward drift.

 

Ray

[sem34090]

I always imagined something like the M&SWJR, but extending further North.

Edited March 13, 2021 by sem34090

[Compound2632]

There is a convincing argument that the area around Strines, near New Mills, may have been in Nesbit's mind. In which case, there is a candidate for the Old Gentleman: Edward Ross, who was Secretary of the MS&LR from 1850 to 1897. Of course this theory caused considerable outrage at the K&WVR, though that line's only connection with The Railway Children is as a location for the film, made two-thirds of a century after Nesbit wrote the book.

 

Very interesting woman, Edith Nesbit.

[Edwardian]

Yes, I've just seen this, and would have advocated Strines, had Stephen not done so. It's on the MR-MS&LR line, which I'm very fond of as a subject (Marple in particular).

 

Strines is a typical country through station that, along with so many others, is compatible with the book, but the tunnel, aqueduct and even a house overlooking the line that, IIRC, Nesbit stayed in are all close by.

 

I tend to think that fictional locales are just that, fictional, and that one should not look for an exact match of single model because, like fictional characters, they are often composites of many real places.

 

I daresay, then, that there may be other influences at work in the book's setting, but the area around Strines is a very good match, so of all places, it probably had the greatest influence. 

 

Having said that, the site Stephen has linked to is new to me, so I shall read it with interest.