Les Enfants du chemin de fer

Roberta, Peter and Phyllis were not railway children at first. They lived with their father and mother in a comfortable red-brick house near London. Roberta was the oldest, and everyone called her Bobbie. Peter was the boy. He wanted to be an engineer when he grew up. Phyllis was the youngest. She always meant well, but she was always falling over things.

They had a kind mother who wrote stories and funny poems for them. They had a cheerful father who was never too busy to play. They went to a good school, and they had a cook and a maid. They did not know then how lucky they were.

The change came soon after Peter's tenth birthday. Among his presents was a toy steam engine. It was the most beautiful engine anyone had ever seen. For three days it worked perfectly. Then, one evening, something inside it went bang. The engine stopped and would not move again.