The Railway Children Return: Celebrities will appear in Yorkshire at World Premiere of the new film

The cast includes Call the Midwife’s Jenny Agutter, who reprises her role as Bobbie Waterbury more than 50 years after the original film, Game of Thrones star John Bradley and Sheridan Smith, who will all be attending the star-studded event.

VIP guests will take a train from Oakworth Station to Keighley for the film’s premiere at Keighley Picture House Cinema on July 3 before the London screening takes place on July 10.

BAFTA award-winning director Morgan Matthews and his crew shot scenes in key locations from the original film last year, including the Haworth, Oakworth Station, The Brontë Parsonage and the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway.

Inspired by one of the most beloved British family films of all time, The Railway Children Return is an “enchanting, moving, and heart-warming adventure for a new generation,” according to Production company StudioCanal.

The film is set in 1944 during the Second World War when life in Britain’s cities became increasingly perilous.

Three evacuee children – Lily (Beau Gadsdon), Pattie (Eden Hamilton) and Ted (Zac Cudby) Watts – are sent by their mother from Salford to the Yorkshire village of Oakworth. There to meet them on the train station platform are Bobbie Waterbury (Jenny Agutter), her daughter, Annie (Sheridan Smith), and grandson Thomas (Austin Haynes), and with their help the evacuees are soon settling into their new life in the countryside.

When the children discover injured American soldier Abe (KJ Aikens), hiding out in the railyard at Oakworth Station, they are thrust into a dangerous quest to assist their new friend who, like them, is a long way from home.

The original film

The Railway Children, released in 1970, tells the story of a mother and her three children who move to the Yorkshire countryside after their father is falsely imprisoned. It is based on a book that was written by E Nesbit and first published in 1906.

The film starred Dinah Sheridan, Bernard Cribbins, Sally Thomsett and Gary Warren.

Agutter was still a teenager when she shot to fame as the oldest of the Waterbury children, who stopped a steam train from hitting an injured boy by waving her red petticoats.

The Railway Children Return is released in UK cinemas on July 15, 2022.