When these prejudices were overcome, many years had to pass before the objections of landowners and citizens were worn down. Railway engineers spent most of their time in a form of diplomatic warfare with opponents to their schemes; huge sums--part of which still lingers in the capital accounts of railway companies--were spent in Parliamentary proceedings over Railway Bills. This barren process had to be repeated when electric traction made its appearance; but happily the electrical fight was not upon quite so extensive a scale, nor was the period of preparation followed by anything comparable to the Railway Mania of 1845, when the public made up for its early contempt of railway enterprise by tumbling over itself to get shares in some of the most crazy schemes which were ever put into shape by unscrupulous company promoters. The early history of the steam railway is interesting in connection with electrical locomotion for two reasons. It shows that the railroad proper evolved out of the tramroad or 'light railway,' as it would now be called--a type of line which is specially suited to electrical operation. It also includes a controversy between three modes of traction; and this controversy forms a very good introduction to a discussion of the reasons why electricity is so economical in locomotion. These three modes were (1) stationary engines: (2) locomotives: (3) the device known as the 'atmospheric railway.' In both the first and third, engine houses were placed close to the line at convenient intervals. In the first, each steam engine operated an endless rope to which the train of carriages was attached. The system is still in use for colliery working and is also employed (in an improved form, of course) for funicular railways. George Stephenson himself employed it to assist locomotives up heavy gradients. In the atmospheric railway the stationary engines were used to exhaust the air from a length of cast-iron piping laid close to the railway. The principle is the same as that of the 'pneumatic tube' which the Post Office uses for sending papers over short distances. The papers are placed in a cylinder which fits the interior of the tube; and when the air is exhausted from the tube in front of the cylinder, the pressure of the air behind it drives the cylinder forward.