# The Railway Children — Character guide

> Key figures in The Railway Children by E. Nesbit.

- [Roberta (Bobbie)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/roberta_bobbie.md): Roberta is the child her mother might quietly have favoured, and the one who most feels the family's fall from the red-brick villa to a cottage by the railway. Where Peter schemes and Phyllis blurts, Bobbie watches, reme
- [Peter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/peter.md): Peter is the middle child whose birthday model engine explodes within three days of arriving, an early hint that his enthusiasms outrun his judgment. He longs to be useful and manly, and the family's sudden poverty sting
- [Mother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/mother.md): Before the change, Mother filled the nursery with homemade poems and read her stories aloud after tea; afterward, she writes furiously for money and never lets the children see her cry. Her pride forbids charity, and her
- [Phyllis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/phyllis.md): Phyllis trails her older siblings with earnest questions and inconvenient honesty, the one who asks Perks why he doesn't keep his birthday. She is neither as brave as Bobbie nor as bold as Peter, but her eagerness to hel
- [Father](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/father.md): Father is remembered in the book's opening pages as never cross, never unjust, always ready for a game — which makes his abrupt absence all the more disorienting. The children are told nothing, and his name becomes a thi
- [Perks](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/perks.md): Perks holds court in the Porters' room among lamps and railway almanacs, making tea in a beer can and pretending to be gruffer than he is. He has a wife and children of his own and no time for birthdays, which the childr
- [The Old Gentleman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/old_gentleman.md): He is the well-dressed, grandfatherly stranger the children wave to each morning as his train rushes past the Three Chimneys station, and he becomes their discreet benefactor whenever a crisis demands an adult's help. Th
- [The Station Master](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/station_master.md): As the official guardian of the railway the children adopt after their move to Three Chimneys, he represents both the strict order of the line and its surprising capacity for mercy. He bristles at Peter's mischief and th
- [The Russian](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/russian_prisoner.md): A political exile rescued by the children from a train.
- [Jim](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/jim.md): A young man injured in the railway tunnel.
- [Mrs. Perks](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters/mrs_perks.md): Perks' wife, a kind woman.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_railway_children_se/characters