1990

IMLEC 1990 was held in Stoke Park, home of Guildford MES. Lionel Flippance was trying to make it 3 in a row with his BR Proposed 2-8-2 "George Eveniss" . . . and he did just that to set multiple new IMLEC records. Ted Joliffe describes the run:

"Run 23. The excitement was really hotting up now. Lionel Flippance, as the defending champion, had the distinction of the final run of the competition. Kevan Ayling's results had been posted, and he was currently at the top of the scoreboard, so Lionel was well aware of the target he had to beat to retain the top award for a further year. The locomotive is much as it was last year at Leyland, Lionel told us that he had done a little work on it, just general maintenance, and he had added a little extra ballast to the engine in order to distribute the weight more evenly onto the drivers. Otherwise he has been engaged in building his own new house, and that as a long term project had kept him extremely
busy.

Coincidentally, Guildford is Lionel's home club, first time as far as I am aware that the defending champion has had the chance of defending his title on the track he knows best. I had noticed him watching the other runs from various vantage points and obviously using this knowledge to work out the most effective load for his own engine, the B.R. proposed 2-8-2, "George Eveniss". In the event the total chosen was 25 including driver and observer, members of the Guildford club made up a large part of the
load. The start was clean, with no slip, although the drain cocks were belching forth gouts of steam; the cannily positioned outlets on these blew well clear of the track - no point in making adverse conditions for oneself. I noticed a slight slip as the engine came off Taurus curve, this started again as the tail of the train came off the curve, leading to the locomotive slipping as it went on to the bank leading up to the summit.
First lap took 3 min. 5 sec. but then the load was well in hand and the lap times dropped to 1 min. 57 sec.; the timings remained in this region for the rest of the uneventful run, 2 min. was the slowest 1 min. 50 sec. the fastest. The station area was really crowded when Lionel came in at the end of the run, when a cheer went up to mark the finish of a well driven consistent run.

Final train movement of the competition was the setting up of the dynamometer car in front of Dave Camplin's diesel locomotive, and a lap was run with it in the testing configuration as a check that all was well. It was, the miniscule variation in recording was much as would have been expected from the many miles that the car had run through the competition. Then we settled down to wait for the final results,"