In late August the Crewe to Manchester Community Rail Partnership kindly gave the Friends of Handforth Station (FoHS) a number of copies of “Arlos Adventures There and Back”.

This Rail Safety book is written by train driver Bessie Matthews, and is aimed at children aged 7-13 years old. The book’s story follows Arlo and his friends on a day out as they make safe choices around the railway, its trains, and its stations.

FoHS have now donated copies of the book to each of Handforth’s three primary schools and to the local library.

In September, FoHS president Mike Bishop presented St Benedict’s Roman Catholic Primary School with 70 copies of the Rail Safety book, to head teacher Hannah McGuire and Year teacher Sonny McCarthy. To conclude the assembly, the children sang a hymn accompanied on the piano by music teacher and FoHS member, Rosemary Thomason.

In October, Mike presented a Year 3 class assembly at the Wilmslow Academy with multiple copies of the “Arlo” book. After the presentation, Natalie Scappaticci, in charge of the assembly, said “We’re grateful to the Rail Partnership, and to FoHS, for helping us to keep our children safe.”

More recently, Mike presented more “Arlo” books to the local community. He attended a school assembly at Handforth Grange School and presented head teacher Andrea Booth with 90 copies of the “Arlo” book. Later that morning, Mike donated 30 copies to Debbie Wood, head librarian at Handforth Library. Debbie said “As Handforth’s children grow up and use the railway more and more independently, we hope they’ll remember the lessons in this great little book.”

Commenting on the four book donations, Mike Bishop said “We are very pleased to donate such a worthwhile book to our local primary schools and to the public library. We hope that youngsters will enjoy reading it and, more importantly, that they learn important lessons about how to travel safely on the railway.”