Philadelphia stands next to New York among eastern cities in the electric development of its terminals, although it is interesting to note here and now that for twenty years past the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad has handled both freight and passenger trains with electric power through its double terminal and long tunnel in the heart of that city and has handled them both economically and efficiently. The wonder only is that its chief competitors should have retained steam power so long as a motive power in their long tunnels underneath Baltimore. Yet it is one of these competitors which is making the real progress in the Philadelphia situation. The Pennsylvania Railroad, which owns and operates Broad Street Station, probably one of the best-located passenger terminals in any of the very large cities of America, has already begun to use electricity to bring a large number of its suburban trains in and out of that station. After much patient experimentation it has evolved a comparatively inexpensive method of carrying the current to the overhead trolleys of these suburban trains. And the system has already proved itself so economical and so successful as to render its extension to other portions of the system a question of only a comparatively short time. Electricity should spell opportunity to steam railroads. Yet until recently it seemingly has failed to do this very thing. It has looked as if the steam railroaders of a past generation were not thoroughly awakened to the opportunities it offered; were not willing, at any rate, to strive to find a way toward taking advantage of it. To understand this better let us go back for a moment and consider the one-time but short-lived rivalry between the trolley and the steam locomotive. As soon as the electric railroads--which were, for the most part, developments of the old-fashioned horse-car lines in city streets--began to reach out into the country from the sharp confines of the towns the smarter of the steam railroad men began to show interest in the new motive power. It would have been far better for some of them if they had taken a sharper interest at the beginning; if at that time they had begun to consider earnestly the practical adaptation of electricity to the service of the long-established steam railroad.