January 16th, 1902, witnessed an accident on the City and South London Electric Railway, happily unattended with serious consequences. A train left the Elephant and Castle Station shortly after seven a.m., and had proceeded some two hundred yards towards the Borough when what is technically known as a “short” occurred in the switch. This means, roughly, that the current had chosen to go a way of its own instead of through the insulated wires to the motor. Hence, an “arc” was produced--that is, an arc lamp on a large scale. The insulating material began to burn and smell and smoke. Small defects of this kind are common enough, and the flame is frequently put out with the driver’s hand or cap. On this occasion the flame resisted all efforts to put it out, and the driver had to stop the cars and send back for assistance. The following trains came on slowly, and the engine pushed the broken-down predecessor on to the Borough Station. It was found necessary to ask the passengers (fortunately numbering only about thirty or forty) to leave the train, and the fire was then easily extinguished, though it was found necessary to cut off the current from the generating station for a short time. The line was only blocked for about an hour, and the accident was of little importance except as illustrating one advantage which, it is said, the “engine” system of electric traction possesses over the “multiple unit.” MEDICAL OBJECTIONS TO TUBE TRAVELLING But apart from accidents and breakdowns, a terrible indictment is brought against tube railways in general, and the Central London in particular, which, if true, constitutes a veritable drawback. The accuser is Dr. L. C. Parkes, Medical Officer of Health for Chelsea, who says: “Tube railways are still such a comparative novelty, that the question of the healthiness of this mode of travel has not yet been fully determined. Dr. Wynter Blyth, in an address a year ago, gave the results of some experiments on the ventilation and condition of the atmosphere in the tubes and stations of the Central London Railway. The chief cause of the movements of air in the tubes and stations, lifts and stairways, is the passage of the trains along the tubes, which the carriages nearly fill, thus acting as a piston in a cylinder, driving air before them and sucking it in from behind in their progress from one station to another. The condition of the atmosphere, was not excessively foul, the largest amount of CO ascertained to be present, being 11·9 parts per 10,000 vols. This sample was taken in a carriage containing twenty-seven people between the Lancaster Gate and Marble Arch Stations. The amount of CO present in the air of the station’s lifts and stairways varied between 8 and 11 parts per 10,000. In no case, then, did Dr. Wynter Blyth find the amount of CO in the air of the tube to be more than three times the amount usually present in the outer atmosphere of the London streets (average 4 parts per 10,000).