It’s all change for this old tram after it reached the end of the line with the Manx Electric Railway.

For this ex-Lisbon tramcar is now a - tram bar!

It has pride of place in the back garden of Grant Taylor’s cottage in Ballasalla where it has been converted into a comfy snug worthy of any country pub - complete with bar stools, beer mats and a Guinness pump.

Grant, 39, who works as a guard on the Steam Railway and as a stationmaster at Castletown, is modest about his achievement.

’The bar is just a little wooden box with a kitchen worktop. I’ve had friends round but it’s not used as much as I would like!’

Purchased from Portugal at a reported cost of £23,000 in 1996, Lisbon no.360’s career on the MER ended before it even began.

For no sooner had it arrived after a somewhat fraught road journey, it was found that it was too wide, and wouldn’t clear the tram poles at Port Jack.

This was not the first time, and nor the last, that taxpayer’s money has been spent unwisely.

The tram, which dates from 1908, was consigned to the depot and was then used as a waiting shelter, minus its trucks, at Derby Castle.

Two years later, it was moved into storage at the former Homefield bus garage in Douglas.

And when that site was vacated by government, it was taken to JCK’s yard in Balthane.

Then in 2013, Grant was made an offer that no railway enthusiast could refuse.

He said: ’I was doing the garden up at Balthane Cottage. It’s my grandfather’s house I inherited.

’The company doing the garden knew JCK and it just came up in conversation - would I like a tram? I would just have to pay to move it.

’We built a plinth for it and it arrived on the back of trailer up the driveway and we craned it in over the house.’

When it arrived, the tram still had a ’wait here for tram’ notice on the side so Grant painted it brown. ’The last thing I wanted to do was upset the neighbours!,’ he said.

He painted the tram again about 12 months ago. ’I painted it blue simply because I had some blue paint!’ he said.

The bar stools were donated by the landlord of the Viking pub in Castletown.

Despite appearances, the Guinness isn’t on tap.

Grant bought a surger unit for cans of the black stuff which comes complete with a replica pump head.

The ex-Lisbon tramcar was the subject of a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Infrastructure earlier this month.

In the request, the DoI was asked to provide the total costs relating to the acquisition of the vehicle, including purchase price, transportation to the island and the several trips made to Lisbon at the time by Isle of Man Railway’s management.

The DoI refused the request under FoI as the information being sought pre-dated the Act coming into force in October 2011.