running on it, will be made this afternoon for the first time.

You are, of course, all aware that electrical railways have been run,
and are running with success in several places. Their introduction has
been chiefly due to the energy and invention of Messrs. Siemens. I do
not doubt of their success and great extension in the future--but when
considering the earliest examples of these railways in the spring of
last year, it occurred to me that in simply adapting electric motors to
the old form of railway and rolling stock, inventors had not gone far
enough back. George Stephenson said that the railway and locomotive were
two parts of one machine, and the inference seemed to follow that when
electric motors were to be employed a new form of road and a new type of
train would be desirable.

When using steam, we can produce the power most economically in large
engines, and we can control the power most effectually and most cheaply
when so produced. A separate steam engine to each carriage, with its own
stoker and driver, could not compete with the large locomotive and heavy
train; but these imply a strong and costly road and permanent way. No
mechanical method of distributing power, so as to pull trains along at a
distance from a stationary engine, has been successful on our railways;
but now that electricity has given us new and unrivaled means for the
distribution of power, the problem requires reconsideration.

With the help of an electric current as the transmitter of power, we
can draw off, as it were, one, two, or three horse-power from a hundred
different points of a conductor many miles long, with as much ease as we
can obtain 100 or 200 horse-power at any one point. We can cut off the
power from any single motor by the mere break of contact between two
pieces of metal; we can restore the power by merely letting the two