This was the condition when, in the middle eighties, electric traction was suggested. The public, suffering from the decay of the tramway service, but not realising that the cause lay with an Act devised for the public benefit, expected the tramway companies to adopt the new mode of propulsion. But as the conversion to electric working involved track-work costing several thousands of pounds per mile, and new cars costing several hundreds each, together with a large generating plant and new car depots, the change was commercially impossible to companies which were forced to retain their old horse equipment in order to realise something for the shareholders in the day of expropriation. From these causes there arose a demand that the municipalities should take over the tramway systems and do what the companies appeared too slow to undertake. Thus a strong impetus was given to municipal tramway enterprise. But this impetus did not remove the causes of delay. The local authorities had good economic reasons for waiting until the existing tramway leases ran out and so enabled purchase to be made upon the most advantageous terms. They were also obliged to move very cautiously in adopting so radical and so novel a change as electric traction. Municipalities are not speculative traders, who are ready to take risks after a rapid expert investigation of a new policy. Further, no municipality likes to accept the decision of another as valid for its own district. The consequence was that each municipality thought it necessary to get its own expert report on the subject and, in many cases, to send its own deputation to inspect Continental tramway systems. These preliminary studies, with debates in Council chambers and newspaper columns, with public meetings of encouragement or protest, and with the erection of experimental lines, took up so much time that little of a substantial nature was done until several years after engineers were ready and willing to carry out the conversion of large systems of horse tramways to electric working. The municipalities, however, were not the only forces at work. Towards the year 1896, when a large number of tramway leases were running out, a considerable amount of business was done by private capital in buying up horse tramways with a view to conversion and also to extension far beyond the limits of the existing routes. The essential condition of the success of such enterprise was, of course, the renewal of the tenure of the tramways for at least another twenty-one years. Here--and in the accompanying applications for extensions of route--the true inwardness of the Tramways Act was shown. Everything was in the hands of the local authorities. They had only to withhold their consent, and nothing could be done. And this power of veto enabled them to drive any bargain they pleased with the promoters of tramway schemes.