Heavy damages were claimed against the Company for the extra coal burnt, and though the arbitrators found in our favour, their decision was reversed by the High Court. Something like £120,000 was involved, and with Sir Alfred Cnpps (later Lord Parmoor) as counsel, the Company appealed to the House of Lords. It was not until 1912 that the case was won, and the original award returned.

On the electrical side, large and small alternators and d.c. generators, rotary converters, transformers, switch and control gear, motors, instruments and meters, magnetic brakes, and traction equipment were made to American designs An auto-transformer dating from July 1902 was described as for starting a 5-hp motor 'having 6000 alternations', i.e. for 50 cycles. One product that has long since vanished was the Bremer arc lamp; for this, Westinghouse had acquired the patent rights for both the lamp and the carbons, which were designed to give light of a better colour than the normal. Arc lamps were made in two forms, the flame arc type (for street lighting and exterior shop lighting) and the enclosed arc, which was used for lighting the interior of Selfridge's new stores in Oxford Street.

The first traction contract was for the Mersey Railway electrification and was signed on July 15,1901. It covered the complete scheme power house (with three 1650-hp Corliss steam engines), feeders, collector rails, trains, and tunnel ventilating and pumping machinery, almost all made in America, and was financed by The Tractionand Power Securities Company, which had been founded by Westinghouse and had a future Prime Minister, Bonar Law, on the board.

It is recalled that the chief engineer of works, H. L. Kirker, who was an American of very direct methods, gave the difficult job of locating the position of an old ventilating tunnel to T. Ferguson, a recently arrived traction engineer, as his first work on outside erection. Ferguson, who is still at the works as a traction consultant, improvised instruments and made many night surveys in the various tunnels and shafts, undeterred by a two-inch deposit of oily soot on the walls; when a new tunnel was driven, it broke through into the old one exactly as calculated, good testimony to the accuracy of the survey. Electric working started in May 1903, and meanwhile a contract had been obtained for the electrification of the Metropolitan Railway, this including multiple-unit trains and locomotives.

The assembly of instruments, meters, and relays began in H aisle in the spring of 1903 The testing and standards section of the 'agency' Company was brought down from London with L. C. Benton in charge, and the testing section was considerably extended.