I was watching The Railway Children and the scene where they prevent a train accident by waving their scarlet underwear to stop the train. I immediately thought "Ready Made Family!" I mean the scene where the Marlows and Dodds wave Nicola's yellow jumper to stop the train, after vandals have been mucking with the line.

AF said somewhere she loved the Railway Children - she read the E Nesbitts before writing Thursday Kidnapping - and I wondered if it was a conscious or unconscious echoing on her part?

It then struck me that the whole of "Ready Made Family" is a sort of late twentieth century Railway Children. The railway is integral all the way through, from when Mrs Marlow, Ginty and Lawrie are late because they are in "almost a nasty accident" to the arrival of the Dodds by train (Nicola and Chas go up into the engine) to Chas's obsession with trains, to travelling by train to Yetland Cove, to walking along the line (leads to ructions with Edgar) and Nicola's trip to and from Oxford. (It's on the train where Edwin says he still misses Rosemary - very evocative scene, leading Nicola to start reflecting on Latin quotes). And of course the basic situation - three children, two girls and a boy, go to stay in the country after a domestic disaster - is the same.

There's also Mr Lanyon who lends Nicola the money for her ticket and says that if the branch-line is closed - as is threatened - then what will it matter [about the money?] Which makes me wonder if AF has some sort of elegy for doomed rural train lines thing going on with this book?

Of course there are train scenes in the other books - the starts of Autumn Term, End of Term and Runaway Home, a scene in The Thuggery Affair. But in no other book is it so pervasive. (And I wonder if she didn't do a train scene in Cricket Term because she was all trained out?)

What do you reckon? Good theory...or siding to nowhere?