There are many interesting stories of the railway period at Menlo Park. One of them, as told by the late Charles T. Hughes, who worked with Edison on the experimental roads, is as follows: "Mr. Villard sent J. C. Henderson, one of his mechanical engineers, to see the road when it was in operation, and we went down one day--Edison, Henderson, and I--and went on the locomotive. Edison ran it, and just after we started there was a trestle sixty feet long and seven feet deep, and Edison put on all the power. When we went over it we must have been going forty miles an hour, and I could see the perspiration come out on Henderson. After we got over the trestle and started on down the track Henderson said: 'When we go back I will walk. If there is any more of that kind of running I won't be in it myself.'" The young reader, who is now living in an age in which the electric railway is regarded as a matter of course, will find it difficult to comprehend that there should ever have been any doubt on the part of engineering experts as to the practicability of electric railroads. But in the days of which we are writing such was the case, as the following remarks of Mr. Edison will show: "At one time Mr. Villard got the idea that he would run the mountain division of the Northern Pacific Railroad by electricity. He asked me if it could be done. I said: 'Certainly; it is too easy for me to undertake; let some one else do it.' He said: 'I want you to tackle the problem,' and he insisted on it. So I got up a scheme of a third rail and shoe and erected it in my yard here in Orange. When I got it all ready he had all his division engineers come on to New York, and they came over here. I showed them my plans, and the unanimous decision of the engineers was that it was absolutely and utterly impracticable. That system is on the New York Central now, and was also used on the New Haven road in its first work with electricity." Mr. Edison knew at the time that these engineers were wrong. They were prejudiced and lacking in foresight, and had no faith in electric railroading. Indeed, these particular engineers were not by any means the only persons who could see no future for electric methods of transportation. Their doubts were shared by capitalists and others, and it was not until several years afterward that the business of electrifying street railroads was commenced in real earnest. In the mean time, however, Edison's faith did not waver, and he continued his work on electric railways, making innumerable experiments and taking out a great many patents, including a far-sighted one covering a sliding contact in a slot. This principle and many of those covered by his earlier work are in use to-day on the street railways in large cities.