x History of Inland Transport 



(6) The reading, by Mr. Philip Dawson, at the Royal Auto- 

 mobile Club, on December 8, of a valuable paper on " The 

 Future of Railway Electrification," in which after detailing 

 what had already been done in the United States, in Germany, 

 and, in this country, on the suburban systems of the Lanca- 

 shire and Yorkshire, the North Eastern and the London, 

 Brighton, and South Coast railways he showed the practic- 

 ability and the advantages of applying electric traction (single 

 phase system) to main-line long-distance traffic ; announced 

 that the surveys and calculations in connection with a scheme 

 for electrifying the whole of the L.B. and S.C. Railway Com- 

 pany's services between London and Brighton were already far 

 advanced ; mentioned that such a transformation would allow 

 of a 10 to i5-minute service to Brighton and of the 52-mile 

 journey being done by non-stop trains in about 45 minutes, or 

 by stopping trains in about 60 minutes ; and declared that 

 " the equipment of this line if, as he hoped would be the case, 

 it were carried out, would be epoch-making in the history of 

 British railways." 



Thus the whole subject of inland transport is now so 

 much " in the air " that the story of its gradual and varied 

 development, as here told and this, too, for the first time on 

 the lines adopted in the present work should form a useful 

 contribution to the available literature on one of the most 

 important of present-day problems. 



EDWIN A. PRATT. 

 December 12, 1911. 



