1973

The 1973 edition of IMLEC was held at the Chingford & District Model Engineering Club. The track is roughly kidney shaped, with two long curves greater than 180 degrees at each extremity.

The winner this time was Bill Longstaff's LNER L1 driven by his daughter Pat Killian as run No.4. D. E. Lawrence gives us more details:

"Run No. 4. I had some misgivings about as interviewing Bill Longstaff whose 5in gauge of LNER L1 was to make this run. Last year it took a good deal of prodding to get Bill to give me a few details about his Stirling "Single" - he did not disappoint me this time! Even with Martin Evans to help, we managed to elicit only the fact that the cylinders are 1 in bore (Bill thinks so anyway) and Martin and I concluded from our estimate of the crank throw that the stroke was 24in. The engine is about 15 years old and has slide valves; there was no doubt that feature as Bill said he puts only "D" valves in his locos. One intriguing thing there is no lead to the valves, they are line-in-line both for admission and exhaust. The safety valves lift at 100 p.s.i. (by gauge). There was a lot of leg-pulling because Bill was not going to drive this year, he had entrusted the footplate to his daughter, Mrs. Pat Killian and thus we arrive at a "first" for I.M.L.E.C. the first woman driver. Pat had to endure a lot of chaff from the Durham lads about this, and to be fair, she gave back as good as she got! The L1 was the entry from the South Durham Society. The scheduled load was a total of 18 persons, but Pat had some trouble starting this and it was decided to reduce the load by 2 passengers at the beginning of the run. With a good deal of slipping the engine got under way. Pat proved to be an able driver and soon had matters under control and to her liking; she even found time to light up a cigarette during the run. Speed was fairly steady with a little slowing round the long south east curve and Pat eased to about 7 m.p.h. through the reverse curve leading from the station on each lap, accelerating rapidly when clear of the slack. She had a coal tray in front of her which covered the driver's speedometer and the observer had to tell her when speed was near the limit of 10 m.p.h. Just before the last lap, Pat declined to take more coal and almost at the finish of the run, came to a stand on the south east curve with very little fire. As she had just completed the 30 minutes allowed, the passengers disembarked and Pat drove the empty train into the station to a well-deserved round of applause. After a little while, the L1's performance figures were put at the top of the score board and our first woman driver was to remain Top-of-the Pops for the rest of the day. What a cliff-hanger this turned out to be; there were still a dozen competitors to run and, although some were to come very close, Bill's locomotive was not dislodged from the premier place."