The details of the various improvements made during these months are too many and too technical to be given here. It is a fact, however, that at this time Edison was doing some heavy electric railway engineering, each improvement representing a step which advanced the art toward the perfection it has reached in these modern days. The newspapers and technical journals lost no time in publishing accounts of this electric railroad, and once again Menlo Park received great numbers of visitors, including many railroad men, who came to see and test this new method of locomotion. Of course, in operating this early road there were a few mishaps, fortunately none of them of a serious nature. In the correspondence of the late Grosvenor P. Lowry, a friend and legal adviser of Mr. Edison, is a letter dated June 5, 1880, giving an account of one experience. The letter reads as follows: "Goddard and I have spent a part of the day at Menlo, and all is glorious. I have ridden at forty miles an hour on Mr. Edison's electric railway--and we ran off the track. I protested at the rate of speed over the sharp curves, designed to show the power of the engine, but Edison said they had done it often. Finally, when the last trip was to be taken, I said I did not like it, but would go along. The train jumped the track on a short curve, throwing Kruesi, who was driving the engine, with his face down in the dirt, and another man in a comical somersault through some underbrush. Edison was off in a minute, jumping and laughing, and declaring it a most beautiful accident. Kruesi got up, his face bleeding, and a good deal shaken; and I shall never forget the expression of voice and face in which he said, with some foreign accent: 'Oh yes! pairfeckly safe.' Fortunately no other hurts were suffered, and in a few minutes we had the train on the track and running again." This first electric railway was continued in operation right along through 1881. In the fall of that year Edison was requested by the late Mr. Henry Villard to build a longer road at Menlo Park, equipped with more powerful locomotives, to demonstrate the feasibility of putting electric railroads in the Western wheat country. Work was commenced at once, and early in 1882 the road and its equipment were finished. It was three miles long, and had sidings, turn-tables, freight platform and car-house. It was much more complete and substantial than the first railroad. There were two locomotives, one for freight and the other for passenger service. The passenger locomotive was very speedy and hauled as many as ninety persons at a time. Many thousands of passengers traveled over the road during 1882. The freight locomotive was not so speedy, but could pull heavy trains at a good speed. Taken altogether, this early electric railway made a great advance toward modern practice as its exists to-day.