Neither do we need exact dollars and cents when we come east to the important electrification of the coal-carrying Norfolk and Western through the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia--a tremendously busy thirty-mile stretch of line over which there constantly moves a vast tonnage of bituminous coal. Conditions here are considerably different from those upon the Milwaukee yet the results that are being attained are largely the same. Upon the N. & W. huge trains of one-hundred-ton steel cars (3250 tons to the train), which formerly required three big steam Mallets, are now being hauled by two articulated electric locomotives, and at twice the speed. Focus your attention upon this last statement and then remember what we were saying about the necessity of keeping the motor-cars moving constantly and uniformly through the busiest streets of our metropolitan cities. It is not any more necessary to the understanding of the real economics of railroad electrification to know that the Norfolk and Western has made twelve double electric locomotives do the work of thirty-three steam Mallets than it is to know that those great mountain-climbing trains are moving at the rate of fourteen miles an hour instead of but seven as formerly. Here is speed; but speed expressed in a double dimension--speed compounded if you choose to put it that way. While there also arises the interesting further proposition that in any railroad of high traffic density it is intensely important that its trains be kept moving at a uniform speed. In other days the freight movement at seven miles an hour through the thirty-mile heavy grade mountain section of the Norfolk and Western tended to "drag the line" and hold back the trains behind it, despite the fact that upon these more level sections their steam power could easily draw them at fourteen miles an hour. But never without a free clearance. That thirty-mile summit section was indeed a clog to the efficient operation of the line. Electricity removed the clog. And, quite incidentally, the soft-coal smoke in a very dirty tunnel through the crest of the Blue Ridge.