Application for a Light Railway Order may be made for a county, borough, or district council by any individual, corporation, or company, or jointly by councils, individuals, corporations, or companies. Applications have to be referred to the Commissioners in the first instance, and, if approved of, are placed before the Board of Trade for confirmation. Provision is made by the Act for the purchase of land under certain conditions specified in the Lands Clauses Act. Provision is also made for enabling local authorities to acquire any undertaking whose route passes through their district, the time and terms of purchase being arranged by agreement between the promoters and the municipalities, the terms of sale, usually thirty-five years’ purchase, being settled on the basis of a fair market value of the line in full work, but with no allowance for compulsory acquisition. Local authorities, landowners, and adjacent railway companies have the right to object to proposed lines. The local authorities, however, possess no power of veto, but generally the Commissioners refuse applications from promoters if their schemes are strongly protested against by the municipalities concerned. To what extent this Act has been taken advantage of may be judged by the fact that last year no fewer than forty-seven municipalities were stated to have disbursed, or to have decided to disburse, eleven millions sterling in their electric tramways. In several instances the municipality owns the tramways and leases them on certain conditions to large companies or syndicates, a kind of compromise between absolute urban control and unrestricted private enterprise. How it works in the provinces can be understood by taking as examples four of the largest cities in Great Britain, viz., Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham. THE GLASGOW TRAMWAYS