Margaret Awdry is the wife of Wilbert Awdry, sister-in-law of George Awdry and the mother of Christopher Awdry, Hilary Fortnam and Veronica Chambers. She was born in 1912, a year after Wilbert Awdry was given birth. It was she who asked Wilbert Awdry to send the stories he told Christopher who had a bout of measles in 1942 to a publisher so that the Railway Series can begin.
She met Wilbert in Jerusalem, Israel where he was teaching children at St. George's School there. They moved back to the United Kingdom in 1936 and were married two years later. In the Railway Series, she made a cameo in the third illustration of "Percy Runs Away" for Troublesome Engines published in 1950 with Wilbert, ten year old Christopher, both Veronica and Hilary on the platform to see Percy when he passes by with two Troublesome Brakevans. The Awdrys were affected by her death in 1989 at the age of just seventy-seven when Christopher had published Thomas and the Twins in tribute to her.