Under the Act of 1896 a Tube should officially be described as a Light Railway. So should a Shallow Underground, an Urban Tramway, and a Rural Tramway. So, too, should a Brighton Beach Line, or any short train running along a pier. So also should any railway line for the carrying of minerals, worked by heavy sixty-ton locomotives, and hauling five or six hundred tons of ore at a time! _Reductio ad absurdum._ The originators of the Act did not define what a Light Railway really is, but they evidently had in their minds, _inter alia_, that railways, unrestricted by Board of Trade regulations as to fencing, sidings, gradients, and permanent stations, should be permitted to run along the high roads, acting as feeders to the existing lines, to the benefit of the small towns, villages, and farms near which they passed. Thus a pleasing vision unfolded itself of revived agricultural prosperity, of handy little trams peacefully steaming along the highways, stopping, when hailed, at some convenient corner, where the farmers’ waggons would be in waiting with produce to be taken away to market in exchange for goods delivered to them. It was a promising idea, for the cost of construction per mile would necessarily bear no comparison with that of ordinary heavy railways. But in this form Light Railways were not developed. Agriculturists abandoned the hope of any immediate relief, and it came to be recognised that the Act meant a development, not of goods, but of passenger traffic, and that, so far as extra-urban districts were concerned, Light Railways meant Tramways, just as they did in town or city. It may be asked, “Do not local railways answer all requirements of the ever-increasing population and already congested districts? Whereabouts are these country tramways that we hear so much about? and in what respects are they so useful and necessary?” For goods the network of local railways covering the country is no doubt fairly sufficient, and eventually, when well-organised services of electric-motor waggons aid in feeding them with merchandise collected and delivered at the very doors of consignor and consignee, they will fully answer their purpose; but for linking together city, town, village, and hamlet in the interests of working-men--in many districts the chief customers--they are almost useless. For this class, wishing to get about quickly--going to and from their daily toil, paying visits to their sporting pals, attending dog shows, football matches, etc., taking their wives and children shopping, and on holidays going some distance afield--a local railway, even if close by, is of little use, with its rigid time-table, its fixed stopping-places, its high fares, and its general formality. What they wanted, and what, until the introduction of electric traction, they waited patiently for, was a service of comfortable cars, that would pass their houses every few minutes, and would take them long stages for, at the utmost, a twopenny fare.