But after all, the question of gas vs. electricity will resolve itself into one of cost, and it is here where gas will inevitably hold its own. The fundamental principle of the electric light is that for a given exertion of power you obtain a given proportion of light, neither more nor less. For every hour it is burning there will be required a certain exactly-ascertained proportion of revolutions of the steam engine, and therefore, if the whole town is lighted it can be done only at a strictly proportionate expense to the lighting of a single house. As to what that expense will be, as compared with gas, the Brighton train would, if we had an idea of the actual figures, afford a precise means of information. I met on the train a well-known gas engineer, attracted, like myself, by the novelty of the experiment. What the electric light cost he was not able to say, but when we take into account the capital sunk in plant, involving a steam engine with the necessary buildings, consumption of coal and necessary employment of skilled labor, it must be something considerable. Against this is the bare fact that the Brighton train could be lighted with gas for the double journey at the cost of 10d. It is a physical impossibility that electricity should ever come anywhere near this, and that probably explains the singular phenomenon that at the time when electricity is making conspicuous advances in public favor, the value of gas shares is not only steadily maintained, but is actually rising in the market. [Illustration: The steel parts used for interior car finish are all standardized, and are formed by powerful presses] [Illustration: Another large press at work on the forming of steel shapes for the interior framing of the cars] The present method of heating an entire train with steam from the locomotive was satisfactorily tested out in the winter of 1887, and was generally adopted the following year. By this improved system the individual heaters in each car were abolished, and a source of much discomfort and complaint was removed. The Pullman cars were immediately altered to benefit by the new system. CHAPTER VIII HOW THE CARS ARE MADE In former chapters has been told the story of the birth of the Pullman car and its development through the various phases of its evolution. Generally speaking, this evolution for the first forty years was characterized chiefly by the addition, at one time or another, of certain inventions and improvements, such as the electric light and the vestibule, and by a changing style of interior decoration conforming to contemporary fashions. But at no time is recorded a change in the basic idea of car construction that can in any measure compare with the revolutionizing change which was recorded in 1908 by the construction of the first "all-steel" Pullman car.