 The
Cardamom tram. An illustration from the famous children’s book "When
the Robbers Came to Cardamom Town" written by the Norwegian author *Thorbjørn
Egner, who himself made the illustrations. This fairytale town,
including the tramway, is recreated in *Kristiansand
dyrepark, a leisure park in southern Norway. It has its own post
office with a special postmark. This stamp is one of two in a
booklet of 10 stamps.
In the town of Cardamom our life is free from care.
Here there are no cars, but there’s a tram for every fare.
I’m the tram conductor on the line called number one,
direction north to south is how we run. |
The ticket for the journey here is absolutely free,
and passengers get little cakes for breakfast and for tea,
for Puddleson who drives the tram is such a friendly man,
who likes us all to be like him who can. |
To tram driver Puddleson's consternation, one evening the tram
disappeared, stolen by the three robbers: "We just crank a bit
here and ring a bit there - then it'll go." And they did, and it
went. "That was fun," said Jesper and Jonathan. And Casper was
pretty keen now, too, because he was standing in the front,
steering. "It must be exciting to be the tram driver," he said.
This is exactly the scene on the stamp. But luckily the tram was
found later on, quite safe and sound, at the town gate; just the
crate of cakes had disappeared!
Catalogue Nos.: Sc 852 / SG 946 / Mi 916 / YT 872 / NK 964
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