many curious,
sceptical railroad managers, few if any of whom except Villard could
see the slightest use for the new motive power. There is, perhaps,
some excuse for such indifference. No men in the world have more new
inventions brought to them than railroad managers, and this was the
rankest kind of novelty. It was not, indeed, until a year later, in
May, 1881, that the first regular road collecting fares was put in
operation--a little stretch of one and a half miles from Berlin to
Lichterfelde, with one miniature motorcar. Edison was in reality doing
some heavy electric-railway engineering, his apparatus full of ideas,
suggestions, prophecies; but to the operators of long trunk lines it
must have seemed utterly insignificant and "excellent fooling."

Speaking of this situation, Mr. Edison says: "One day Frank Thomson,
the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, came out to see the electric
light and the electric railway in operation. The latter was then about
a mile long. He rode on it. At that time I was getting out plans to
make an electric locomotive of three hundred horse-power with six-foot
drivers, with the idea of showing people that they could dispense with
their steam locomotives. Mr. Thomson made the objection that it was
impracticable, and that it would be impossible to supplant steam. His
great experience and standing threw a wet blanket on my hopes. But
I thought he might perhaps be mistaken, as there had been many such
instances on record. I continued to work on the plans, and about three
years later I started to build the locomotive at the works at Goerck
Street, and had it about finished when I was switched off on some other
work. One of the reasons why I felt the electric railway to be eminently
practical was that Henry Villard, the President of the Northern Pacific,
said that one of the greatest things that could be done would be to
build right-angle feeders into the wheat-fields of Dakota and bring in
the wheat to the main lines, as the farmers then had to draw it from
forty to eighty miles. There was a point where it would not pay to
raise it at all; and large areas of the country were thus of no value.
I conceived the idea of building a very light railroad of narrow gauge,
and had got all the data as to the winds on the plains, and found that
it would be possible with very large windmills to supply enough power to
drive those wheat trains."

Among others who visited the little road at this junct