As the world rallied against the Nazis during the second world war, white US military police wantonly attacked their own black servicemen in the Lancashire village of Bamber Bridge in 1943. It was this forgotten history that inspired producer Jemma Rodgers to create the story of Abe, a young black American soldier featured in The Railway Children Return.
Set in 1944, the sequel to the beloved 1970 children’s classic film adapted from Edith Nesbit’s novel features Jenny Agutter reprising her original role as Bobbie. Now a grandmother, Bobbie and her daughter take in three evacuee children who stumble across Abe (Kenneth Aikens), a wounded black American soldier hiding in a railway carriage. When it transpires that he fled the US military because of racial discrimination, the children agree to help hide him.
