INTERURBAN AND CROSS COUNTRY WORK. 257 
cheap enough to give much advantage when they attempt 
serious railway service. In competition with regular lines, 
they soon find themselves handicapped, and for purely 
local purposes they generally are too costly. 
The need in very many cases is for feeding lines to 
facilitate the movement of commodities and passengers 
now laboriously hauled over country roads. For this 
specific purpose the first consideration is cheapness; these 
lines would not come into competition with existing rail- 
roads, hence there is no need for more than very moderate 
speeds; there is no need of handling heavy trains; light 
passenger cars and freight skips are quite sufficient. The 
moment one attempts to use standard gauge and exchange 
cars with through lines heavy construction is necessary to 
stand the wear and tear, and the cost becomes too great for 
the purpose in hand. 
For this cross country service electric construction is 
singularly well suited. Grading, always an item of ex- 
pense to be feared, is much reduced with an electric road, 
for while two or three per cent grades are all that would 
be attempted in ordinary light railway construction, ten 
per cent is perfectly practicable for an electric car with a 
light trailer or two. 
A gain equally important is the weight of the motive 
power. Instead of a locomotive weighing six to ten tons, 
the dead weight of the motor need not much exceed half a 
ton, which, with all the load in the motor car, is available 
for securing adhesion. With this lessened weight to be 
carried the track construction can be lightened and cheap- 
ened correspondingly. 
In spite of the singular fitness of electric service for 
this particular and most useful purpose, little has as yet 
been done. Perhaps the reason is lack of popular apprecia- 
tion of the exact conditions to be met. The danger lies in 
trying to do too much, ir building an ordinary cheap elec- 
tric railroad, instead of something little more elaborate 
than a telpher line; in trying for a speed of twenty miles 
per hour where ten is amply sufficient.