Roughly speaking, the arrangements for generating electricity, distributing it, and utilising it on the car, remain the same in conduit tramways and surface-contact tramways as on the overhead system. The differences between the three systems are, as already indicated, confined to the means of collecting the current for each car. Both the conduit and the surface-contact system were suggested as a means of escape from the main objection to the overhead system—the exposure of 'live' wires in the street. The cable tramway, with its concrete trough and slot, gave an obvious hint. There would be no difficulty, apparently, in carrying wires on insulators in the trough or conduit, and utilising the slot for a 'plough' which would slide along inside the conduit, keeping contact with the wires, and so conveying the current to the car. This was tried for the first time in Blackpool, where—in 1884—a length of conduit tramway was laid along the front street of the t
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