Stick to Safety (Audio Download)

More about the adventures of the trams of the Manx Electric Railway (MER). This time it's the turn of Pam the Paddlebox (Number 16) to find out that it doesn't matter what you look like. What's important is how well you behave and how nice you are to people.

Pam is called a paddlebox because the steps her passengers use to climb aboard are shaped rather like castellations to avoid getting in the way of her wheels. She is the only paddlebox tram currently working on the MER and possibly the only one in the world.

But she's no longer painted green and she wants to be. Her new coat of paint is red, and she thinks red is rubbish. Stick to Safety is about Pam's disastrous attempts to get noticed and how Tina her trailer helps her to avoid getting into trouble.

The trams of the Manx Electric Railway are still doing the job they were built to do 125 years ago. There are no other trams in the world who have worked in three centuries. The MER trams have been trundling up and down their line for such a long time, they have loads of stories.

Doing the illustrations was interesting…

If we thought that illustrating the first in the Tram Tales series was difficult, this the second in the series was a nightmare!

Twain, the star of the first book Something on the Line, is a winter saloon and - sorry Twain - largely a box on wheels.

Pam, who stars in Stick to Safety, is an open motor, which means that her passengers sit in the open air. No walls. They’re brilliant to ride in and dreadful to draw. All those seats! And loads of passengers!

Still, we managed it, and, hopefully, the book is not only fun for children, but also gives an idea of the diversity of the MER fleet.

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