In many cases the short suburban railroads, just outside of the larger cities, which had been operated by small dummy locomotives, were the first to be electrified; in some of these cases they became extensions of city trolley lines. People no longer were obliged to come into town upon a poky little dummy train of uncertain schedule and decidedly uncertain habits and then transfer at the edge of the crowded portion of the city to horse cars. They could come flying from the outer country to the heart of the town in half an hour--and, as you know, the business of building and booming suburbs was born. After these suburban lines had been developed the steam railroad men of some of the so-called standard lines, began to study the situation. As far back as 1895 the Nantasket branch of the present New Haven system was made into an electric line. A little steam road, which wandered off into the hills of Columbia County from Hudson, New York, and led a precarious existence, extended its rails a few miles and became the third-rail electric line from Hudson to Albany and a powerful competitor for passenger traffic with a large trunk-line railroad. The New Haven system found the electric third rail a good agent between Hartford and New Britain and the overhead trolley a good substitute for the locomotive on a small branch that ran for a few miles north from its main line at Stamford, Connecticut. The problems of electric traction for regular railroads were complicated, however, and the big steam roads avoided them until they were forced upon their attention. The interurban roads spread their rails--rather too rapidly in many cases--making themselves frequently the opportunities for such precarious financing as once distinguished the history of steam roads, and also frequently making havoc with thickly settled branch lines and main stems of the steam railroads. In a good many cases the steam roads have had to dig deep into their pockets and buy at good stiff prices interurban roads--a situation that they might have anticipated with just a little forethought. Such a condition was reached in a populous state along the Atlantic seaboard just a few years ago. A big steam road, plethoric in wealth and importance, had a branch line about 100 miles in length, which tapped a dozen towns, each ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 in population. The branch line carried no through business, nor was its local freight traffic of importance, but it was able to operate profitably eleven local passenger trains in each direction daily. These trains were well filled, as a rule, and the branch returned at least its equitable share toward the dividend account of the entire property. As long as it did that no one at headquarters paid any particular attention to it.