The LIFU Steam Tramcar

The LIFU tram was a unique example of a paraffin oil fired steam tramcar. It carried passengers on the Portsmouth Street Tramways Company's horse tramway system from 1896 to 1901.

This is a posed publicity view of the Portsmouth Street Tramways LIFU tram at around the date when the car first entered service. Driver D. Bundy is at the controls and conductor J. Chase is on the stairs. By comparison with a contemporary portrait of his father, similarities suggest that the gentleman next to the driver and wearing the straw boater may be Henry House, Junior.

LIFU was the registered trademark of the Liquid Fuel Engineering Company. This company was set up in the UK by American engineer Henry Alonzo House, Senior M.I.M.E. (1840-1930) in association with his son Henry (Harry) Alonzo House, Junior (1864-1939), also an engineer, and financier Robert Rintoul Symon (1839-1899), with whom House Senior had worked at the Maxim-Nordenfeldt Guns and Ammunition Company. House Senior was a prolific designer with numerous patents in many fields to his name.

In about 1891 they established a works at the Orleans Boat House on the Thames at Teddington, with a registered company address at 20 Abchurch Lane, in the City of London, for the purpose of building fast steam launches using their patent boilers which were fired by paraffin oil (kerosene). They must have been successful as in 1891 House was fined 10 shillings by the Thames Conservancy after a witness reported him speeding at 26 knots in a test boat with the wake causing damage to the banks.

A LIFU boiler (right) with the outer casing removed. This is from a publicity photo of an 1899 road vehicle, but was probably the same type as fitted to the tram.

In March 1894 they moved to the Columbine Yard, East Cowes, Isle of Wight, where the LIFU company was formally set up. As well as boats, LIFU began to produce steam road vehicles including wagonettes, vans, small buses and lorries. It was during this period that in 1896 the steam tram was produced for Portsmouth. In 1899 House Senior was caught by the police speeding in one of his wagonettes at twice the speed limit, then 8 mph, and was fined £3 with 11 shillings costs. In that same year the works had produced some thirty road vehicles and twenty launches, having twelve workshops employing two hundred people on what was effectively a production line.

After Symon's death in 1899, his executers sold off all the stock and materials in East Cowes, forcing the closure of that yard. The company moved in 1900 to Hamworthy, Poole, on the mainland side of the Solent, and House Senior returned to the US leaving the LIFU company in the hands of his son. In 1904 the original partnership was dissolved, although the name continued under the new ownership of J. F. Borthwick and Co. (Scottish boatbuilders) and then moving in around 1910 to Bitterne, Southampton. Others do seem to have produced LIFU patent items under licence, particularly road vehicles by Belhaven Engineering and Motors of Lanarkshire. The LIFU company appears to have been wound up around 1913.

Mr S.E.Harrison gives us a good description of the Portsmouth Street Tramways Company (a Provincial Tramways Company subsidiary) LIFU tramcar and its history in his book "The Tramways of Portsmouth" (LRTL-1955), which I repeat here with slight revisions:-

So far as is known the Portsmouth tram was the only tramcar that " LIFU" ever built themselves. It was a large covered-top double-decker, with knife board seating upstairs. The body was much longer than horse-car bodies, and had on each side ten equal-sized windows, of which the four at each end were glazed to suit two independent passenger compartments, whilst the two central " windows " each had twelve horizontal ventilation slats instead of glass, the boiler and engine being installed in this central compartment. The upper deck had a full-length coach-built roof, but no side or end windows, and was supported solely by eight thin iron rods, three on each side and one at each end. The chimney from the boiler projected through the centre of both the length and width of this roof, and also through the centre of the knifeboard.

A contemporary account states that the car was driven by Mr. D. Bundy, who also attended to the engine, but once started did not need any more attention. The controls consisted of a reversing lever, a regulator and the familiar ratchet handbrake. Mr. J. Chase was the conductor. These were the only men in charge. It was painted blue, and pulled either one or two trailers at busy times, but ran without trailers when the traffic was slack. It generally worked between the Town Hall and North End but occasionally, such as at holiday times, it operated between North End and Cosham. It had a nasty habit of leaving the track when taking the points. It operated from 1896 to 1901, being last used in passenger service on Whit Monday of 1901.

The " LIFU" was retained by the Provincial Tramways Company, when their street tramways interests were bought out by Portsmouth Corporation, and for many subsequent years the body of this car, including its covered top, served as an office in the yard in front of the Park Lane depot of the Portsdown and Horndean Light Railway, standing in the corner against the wall on the south side. On the Light Railway, the "LIFU" was used in the early days to tow electric cars back to the depot when there was failure of the electric current. Presumably the "LIFU" must have been stored in North End depot of the Corporation Tramways from 1901 to 1903, since the Light Railway and Park Lane depot did not exist prior to 1903. At this time Mr. A. W. White, who was formerly the Portsmouth manager and later with the Light Railway, lived at "The Poplars" at North End on the site of which the present Southdown bus offices form part. In March, 1899, he asked the Portsmouth Tramways Committee for permission "bye-and-bye" to run a "motor car" over the Corporation lines from North End to Cosham; and it may be that this refers to his future intentions for the " LIFU". In fact, it remained as an office outside Cowplain depot until 1935.

The tram was built at East Cowes to the House patents. The body seated about 60 passengers. The tubed boiler was constructed by Noakes & Co. of East London. It could run at a working pressure of 250psi and the vehicle consumed 4.54 gallons of water and 0.655 gallons of paraffin per mile on the flat. Located within the boiler firebox was the patent jet. Paraffin was fed from a tank, slightly pressurised by a hand pump, into a cylindrical retort above the jet, probably filled with asbestos wool or similar non-flammable substance, where it was vapourised and then fed to the jet. To initially get the thing going the retort had to be pre-heated by a starter pan filled with methylated spirit to produce the first fuel vapour, after which it was self-sustaining. Then it took about 20 minutes to reach working boiler pressure. A regulator and reversing lever controlled the steam supply and cut-off to the two-cylinder compound engine. Once it was all going it was claimed the power unit required little attention from the driver.

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