STILL CHUGGING ON! Jenny's career back on track

It's all aboard the Railway Children reboot for the seasoned star

- Judy Kean

She's best known to TV viewers these days as the unflappable nun Sister Julienne in the hit TV series Call the Midwife.

But to a certain generation, actress Jenny Agutter will always be Roberta "Bobbie" Waterbury, the character she played in the classic film The Railway Children more than half a century ago.

So they'll be delighted to see that she is once again playing Bobbie - now a grandmother in The Railway Children Return, the very long-awaited sequel to the 1970 drama.

It still surprises Jenny, 69, that people associate her with the brave youngster who, in one memorable scene, ripped up her red petticoat and used it to flag down a train to avert a crash. All these years later, she's still sometimes called by the character's name.

"Somewhere she's a part of me, a friend, but she's not me," muses Jenny. "If I'm sitting in my car, stuck in traffic, and people behave badly and I do that [she gives the finger], and they go past and see me and say, 'Oh, Roberta!' I do think, 'Arrgghh!'"

Jenny was first cast in an adaptation of the much-loved E. Nesbit novel in 1968, when she appeared in a TV series about an Edwardian family who have to relocate to the countryside from London after the father is falsely accused of spying and imprisoned. Two years later, the story was made into a movie, which was a huge hit and made 17-year-old Jenny, who'd been acting since she was 11, a household name.