The Little Boy Who Couldn’t Hold It
One of the lessons in safety the guide teaches is to refrain from every throwing something out the window of a moving train. To illustrate this lesson—in text—Dahl engages a very creative strategy to capture the attention of young readers. He turns this lesson into a funny little anecdote he attributes to a friend of his. Apparently, when this friend was a young boy he was on a train and had to go to the bathroom on a train with no corridors. As a result, he wound up peeing into his father’s sailor hat whereupon he promptly emptied the contents out of the window…and directly into the face of a porter standing on a platform.
The Lovers
The lovers are characters actually attributable to the book’s illustrator, Quentin Blake. For the lesson urging readers to never walk along a railway line even with no train present, he uses the scenario of a following a railway line for a romantic walk. This danger of this decision is then suggested through the information that express trains likely to be using a line with so little traffic is also likely to be the one occupied by express trains traveling much faster than expected. The accompany image illustrates this potential danger by showing two young lovers obliviously skipping down a rail line holding flowers while a train is speeding right behind them.
The Late Passenger
Dahl’s text warns against another romantic notion: chasing after a train on foot to catch it as it is leaving the station. Such imagery become popular thanks to hundreds of scenes in movies making it seem so. Quentin Blake’s accompanying illustration removes the romance and introduces the reality: the late passenger holding on for dear life with one hand while the sudden change in speed of the passenger holding on causes the suitcase to throw open and send clothing flying in the opposite direction.
The Danglers
The Danglers are an unnamed boy and girl—seemingly brother and sister—who are positioned atop a railway bridge. The little girl is dangling over the side of the bridge a toy duck on wheels suspended from a string. They are the literal illustration of the advice to never dangle anything from a bridge.
Shoulders
Perhaps the most memorable character—and, like the others, unnamed—is the who might be nicknamed “Shoulders.” This character appears on the page warning against the danger of sticking one’s head from a moving train. The potential danger of doing so is effectively conveyed in the image: a headless pair of shoulders still leaning out the window while the recently severed head flies off towards the horizon in the opposite direction.
