All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

86 All About Inventions fare, effectively relegated the idea of planting rails in the public highways to oblivion. Indeed, one of the most ambitious inter-urban projects of this character, a street tramway between Wandsworth and Croydon, ultimately to be extended to Reigate, and which was promoted with the express idea of facilitating the distribution of coal and merchandise in general throughout the southern district of London, was abandoned, and ultimately swallowed up by the new steam system of transportation, the greater part of the line being incorporated in the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. It was the United States which impressed the value of street railways or tramways, as they are more popularly described in these islands, upon the world at large. The Americans appreciated the circum- stance that there was a vast difference between the railways so called, and the street facilities of a similar character. The former met the requirements for con- necting up towns and cities, while the latter offered a means of enabling the public to move about within the confines of the town or city and its immediate suburbs expeditiously and inexpensively. Accord- ingly, the first comprehensive inter-urban tramways system was commenced in 1831 in Harlem, New York City, and the success of this initial experiment proved so overwhelming that it was promptly followed by other cities in that country. Naturally, horses were employed for haulage purposes, but the convenience of the system was the outstanding factor which appealed to the general public. Upon the subsidence of the railway craze in Britain attention once more became centred upon tramways,