Future of Electrification.

There is no doubt that problems associated with the building up of the four big railway groups out of the large number of independent concerns once operated in Britain has retarded progress in electrification at Home. Now that most of these problems have been met, a marked increase in electrification activity may be expected, both on the main lines and the principal city and suburban routes. Broadly speaking, the prime problem to be met is the question of finance. Electrification calls for heavy initial expenditure, and it is right that due consideration should be given to this factor. At the same time, it is not unlikely that Government assistance will be forthcoming to the railways in their electrification plans, for the conduct of work of this character would do much to provide employment, both for skilled workers and unskilled labourers. From the viewpoint of the traveller, electric operation has a great deal to commend it, and the experience of the Southern Railway in its extensive electrification works in the London area has shown how electric operation favours traffic growth.

In, say, twenty years or so, it is not unlikely that electric trains and road motors will be the page 36 principal forms of transport employed by railways the world over. Little by little, steam haulage is giving way to electricity and petrol, and, as the years proceed, there will be witnessed a gradual decrease in steam working on both the passenger and freight sides. Who would have dreamt, even ten years ago, that railways were destined to engage in road transport on a nation-wide basis, such as is the case in Britain to-day? All over the Homeland, in city streets and in remote rural areas, the passenger and freight motors of the four group railways may be observed daily in service, and every month sees new road motor services opened up in one corner of the country or another.