45 6 History of Inland Transport 



in place of horse traction. The companies were hampered, 

 however, by the Act of 1870, which remained in force though 

 a complete revolution in the conditions of street rail- transport 

 was being brought about. 



The substitution of electricity for horse-power meant (i) 

 the provision of power stations, sub-stations and new car 

 depots ; (2) the fixing of overhead wires, together with fresh 

 track- work, in the streets ; (3) the use of a heavier type of 

 car ; and (4) the running of a much more frequent service, 

 since only under these conditions can an electric tramway 

 possibly be made to pay. All these things involved a very 

 substantial increase in the capital outlay, and companies 

 may well have hesitated to incur so great an expense with the 

 prospect of only a twenty-one years' tenure before them ; 

 while the position was even more hopeless in the case of 

 companies whose tenure had already half expired. 



The dissatisfaction of the public when they found that the 

 tramway system of the country was not being brought up 

 to date, and compared most unfavourably with tramway 

 systems abroad, gave to the local authorities an apparent 

 justification both for providing and for operating tramways 

 as a special phase of municipal enterprise. At the time the 

 Act of 1870 was passed it was assumed that, although local 

 authorities might construct or acquire tramways, they would 

 certainly lease them to private companies to operate. 1 In 

 proportion, however, as the movement for municipal enter- 

 prise developed, local authorities were the more inclined to 

 operate tramways in addition to owning them. There was 

 no general Act giving them authority so to do, but the diffi- 

 culty was overcome by the insertion in Local Bills of clauses 

 giving to the local bodies promoting the Bills power to operate 

 their own tramways, the reason advanced being that there 

 were difficulties in the way of leasing the lines to companies on 

 satisfactory conditions. 



Matters were not left entirely in the hands of the muni- 

 cipalities, various tramway companies having sought, as their 

 twenty-one years' tenure came to a close, to make such 

 arrangements as would warrant an adaptation of their existing 



1 When the Tramwa)s Bill of 1870 was introduced, Mr Shaw Lefevre 

 stated that its underlying principle was to empower local authorities ' ' to 

 construct tramways, but not, of course, work them." 



