Roughly speaking, the arrangements for generating electricity, distributing it, and utilising it on the car, remain the same in conduit tramways and surface-contact tramways as on the overhead system. The differences between the three systems are, as already indicated, confined to the means of collecting the current for each car. Both the conduit and the surface-contact system were suggested as a means of escape from the main objection to the overhead system--the exposure of 'live' wires in the street. The cable tramway, with its concrete trough and slot, gave an obvious hint. There would be no difficulty, apparently, in carrying wires on insulators in the trough or conduit, and utilising the slot for a 'plough' which would slide along inside the conduit, keeping contact with the wires, and so conveying the current to the car. This was tried for the first time in Blackpool, where--in 1884--a length of conduit tramway was laid along the front street of the town. The conditions could hardly have been less favourable for the system, as the sea frequently washed over the roadway, flooding the conduit with water and sand. Further, the conduit was so shallow that children were able to get at the conductors with their metal spades. As the conduit carried the return wire, the effect of a metallic contact between the two conductors was to cause a 'short circuit,' with very entertaining fireworks but with no amusing results for the tramway engineer. After a heroic trial, the system had to be abandoned. Bournemouth was the next British town to adopt the conduit. It did so as a token of its exceptional civic pride. Three times, in fact, the Bournemouth Corporation declared that it did not want tramways of any kind whatever within its gates. And when the pressure of public opinion forced its consent, the arrangement was made that no overhead wires should appear in the central district of the town. Several miles of conduit tramway were therefore constructed (the trolley system being used for the outer tramway routes); and as by that time a good deal of experience had been gained in conduit work both in America and on the Continent, the contractors were able to give the Corporation a conduit system built to endure. At first the Corporation was reconciled to the fact that the conduit sections had cost about twice as much per mile as the trolley lines, but as years went on, and as the financial results of the system continued to prove unsatisfactory, the Corporation's contentment became modified. An examination of the accounts showed that the conduit sections could be reconstructed on the overhead system at a cost equal to the annual expense of maintaining these sections in good working order. Since the public had got used to the overhead wires on the other sections, and since they had not got used to owning tramways which produced a heavy loss, the decision was made to abandon the conduit system altogether.