A well-to-do suburban family suddenly get a visitor one evening; their father is taken away and their lives turned topsy-turvy. They relocate to "Three Chimneys" a ramshackle house beside a railway line in Yorkshire where they slowly settle into a new life making friends as they go. Bernard Cribbins steals this as the permanently chirpy station porter “Mr. Perks" (and Deddie Davies as his long-suffering wife); William Mervyn as the kindly "old gentleman" whom the children wave to every morning as he passes on his train and Peter Bromilow as the doctor all help us to feel a part of this story as the children have some adventures and mishaps en route to an entirely satisfactory conclusion. Beautifully adapted from E. Nesbit's book, this is another of the films we just couldn't make as good now.