# The Railway Children

The Railway Children by E. Nesbit has 59,703 words.

## At a glance

1906 novel by Edith Nesbit.

- **Author:** [E. Nesbit](https://musael.com/books/authors/e-nesbit.md) (1858–1924)
- **First published:** 1906
- **Original language:** English
- **Genre:** adventure
- **Readers:** middle grade

## How long it takes to read

- **Words:** 59,703
- **Reading time:** 3 h 59 min (at 250 words a minute)
- **Listening time:** 6 h 25 min (audiobook pace, 155 words a minute)

| Reading speed | Whole book | At 30 minutes a day |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 200 wpm | 4 h 59 min | 10 days |
| 250 wpm | 3 h 59 min | 8 days |
| 300 wpm | 3 h 19 min | 7 days |

## Read or listen

The Railway Children is in the public domain: these editions are free to download, read and share.

- Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-nesbit/the-railway-children
- Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1874

## Counted from the text

Automated estimates from the selected Project Gutenberg text; it may include a preface or notes.

- Words in the text: 59,346
- Chapters: 14
- Dialogue: 39% of the words are inside quotation marks
- Average sentence: 12.9 words

## Where the numbers come from

The word count comes from the sources below.

- https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-nesbit/the-railway-children (word count)
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1874 (word count)
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q969970
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Railway_Children
- https://openlibrary.org/works/OL99509W
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1874

Checked on 2026-10-27. Page counts change from edition to edition.

Source: https://musael.com/books/the-railway-children