Brief Overview
IMLEC 1988 was held in the grounds of Eggborough Power Station, home to the Leeds SMEE. The Bristol dynamometer car was used on both days, although it did appear that it suffered "a malfunction in the electronic wizardry" as Laurie Lawrence puts it!
1988 marked the start of a period of dominance for Lionel Flippance and his BR Proposed 2-8-2 "George Eveniss", Lionel recorded the highest ever efficiency at the time (4.392%), eclipsing Les Pritchard's score from 1983, and it is still the 2nd highest efficiency in the competitions history. Laurie tells us more of the run:
"Lionel Flippance, representing Guildford, made Run 10 with a 5 in. gauge locomotive based on a proposed BR 2-8-2 freight engine which never got past the drawing board outline stage. He told me he had used larger mixed traffic wheels of the L.M.S. Black Five, but turned down, he thought, to 6 1/4 in.; the boiler was similar to, but a little longer than a BR Class 7 Britannia boiler and it had a 4 in. long combustion chamber. He used BR Class 9 cylinders, bored out to 2 in. and having a stroke of, he thought, 2½ in. There is a radiant superheater fitted and he has found room for 60 lb. of lead ballast to give extra adhesive weight; the locomotive came out at 2 in. longer than a Britannia and I delicately declined to be one of the four men (one on each corner) to lift it out of the trailer. As is fitting for what old LBSC would have called Bill Massive, Lionel elected to take a load of driver, observer and 24 passengers which included two youngsters.
With all that weight on the drivers, one expected to see a decent start and such was the case, only a little slipping was seen and the very well made 2-8-2 was soon going well and absolute master of this heavy train at around 7½ to 8 m.p.h. So steady and reliable was the running, with Lionel handling the 2-8-2 expertly, that I took a few shots of it belting along and disappeared for another cuppa. Not, I hasten to add because I was any more thirsty than usual, only because another black cloud hove in sight and I distrusted its intent and my umbrella was in my car. As it happened, Lionel had a moisture-free run which received generous applause on its conclusion. There was another long delay before his figures went on the board. And again! Over four per cent! Not just over, but well over! I sighed and did more long-division and multiplication - the hard way. Next year I will take my calculator on a just-in-case basis. I looked up at another black cloud and suspected its intentions, with good reason and suspected the dynamometer car the more."
Interesting Facts
Graham Gain only entered one IMLEC, but has the 3rd highest efficiency of all time, 4.09%.
I include here an excerpt from Lawrie's report after Graham's score went up: "FOUR per cent! Well done and Good Heavens came in equal proportions. As alliterative articulate one acerbic acquaintance affirmed "That will have the pundits picking up their poison pens!" To which I could only reply in similar vein "You have a pertinent perspicacious prescient point perhaps." Privately, I tried to borrow a calculator (unsuccessfully) and had to resort to pen and paper and head scratching instead. From the given data, the figures checked out, as our American friends say, but I did think an average drawbar pull of about 41lb. (I hoped my head scratching was right) was rather high for a four-coupled locomotive, with two 1 1/2 in. bore cylinders and about 80/85lb. "on the clock". I could only think, or suspect there was a malfunction in the electronic wizardry of the dynamometer car."