The Erie people have preferred to conduct their electrification experiments in outlying lines of comparatively slight traffic rather than to commit themselves to a great electrification problem in their congested territory round New York and make some blunder that could be rectified only at a cost of many millions of dollars. That seems good sense, and the Pennsylvania followed the same plan. While its great new station in New York was still a matter of engineer's blueprints, it began practical experiments with electric traction in the flat southern portion of New Jersey. It owned a section of line ideally situated in every respect for such experiments--its original and rather indirect route from Camden to Atlantic City, which had since been more or less superseded by a shorter "air-line" route. The third rail was installed and the new line became at once popular for suburban traffic in and out of Philadelphia and for the great press of local traffic between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Of the success of that move on the part of the Pennsylvania there has never been the slightest question. Regular trains have been operated for several years over this route at a high rate of speed, and not the slightest difficulty has been found in maintaining the schedules. In the Far West the Southern Pacific has made notable progress in the application of electricity as a motive power for branch-line traffic. Practically all of its many suburban lines in and around Portland and Oakland (just across the bay from San Francisco) are today being operated in this way--which enables modern steel passenger trains of two or three coaches to be operated at very frequent intervals, thus providing a branch-line service practically impossible to obtain in any other way. When, in the next chapter, we come to consider the automobile as a factor in railroad transportation, we shall consider this entire question of branch-line operation in far greater detail. I always have considered it one of the great neglected opportunities of the average American railroad. But to take advantage of it means a more intense study of its details and its problems. Our railroads, as you know already, have been woefully under officered. It is chiefly because of this serious defect in their organization that the branch lines, their problems and their possibilities, have so long been neglected. * * * * *