Brief Overview
IMLEC 2003 was back to an old favourite, the Bristol track. The track is 1640ft long in a elongated kidney shape, minimum radius if 78ft with maximum gradient of 1-200.
The winner locomotive was a Minx, built and entered by Geoff Moore and driven by John Ellis. This particular Minx had been entered in IMLEC in 1981 and 1982, achieving a 3rd and a 2nd place. This year it went one better, although not without some contention to start. Neil Read provides the details:
"Run 2 - Geoff Moore - Our second entry was a 5in. gauge 0-6-0 Minx based on the well-known LBSC design. This was one of two locomotives entered for the competition by last year's winner Geoff Moore of Guildford MES. Following criticism from a few who felt it to be unfair on other competitors to allow any driver to drive more than one entry, Geoff entrusted his locomotive to John Ellis, a fellow Guildford MES member. Despite this being only the second time that John had driven Geoff's Minx, the run went very
well. He chose to take eleven passengers which proved to be about right for the prevailing conditions. John reported being able to maintain 20Ibf. draw bar pull on the level and up to 50lbf. on the two main banks. The engine tended to pull the fire to pieces but pressure would return as soon as coal was added. He found the coal excellent and the track suited the locomotive well. Barely using one tank of water during the run, John always looked well in control and his incident-free run gave an efficiency figure of 2.456%."
Interesting Facts
Stuart Duncan entered his Percy Wood built D49 exactly 20 years after Percy entered it at Guildford. Stuart finished a credible 5th, not quite as good as Percy's 3rd though!
Geoff Moore, the defending champion on his B1, finished in 2nd place, beaten only by his own loco driven by someone else.
The Model Engineer report incorrectly states that Dennis Pearson was at the regulator of his Manor, when in fact it was Dennis Taylor driving Dennis Pearson's Manor.