Around this time last month I was out at Stapleford Miniature Railway to take a look at this year's IMechE Railway Challenge. For a number of years I had wanted to have a look at the actual competition, and in the past I had completely missed the date for one reason or another. Last year a friend of mine had reminded me before the event and so this time round I was able to make it to the event.

The Stapleford site was actually quite big and despite the frequent shuttle trains between the two sites (the campsite where the teams camped out and got their locos ready for the competition, and the Haven where the actual competition took place) I ended up spending most of the day running around on foot between the two sites! Certainly wasn't expected to be running up and down all afternoon like that!

Halfway through the day's proceedings there was a brief opening ceremony for the new turntable they've put in on the site for the railway challenge. After a brief word from the organisers they had one of the mini steam locos driving onto the turntable for a spin, which was very amusing.

This year's competition was ultimately won by the Network Rail team whose loco resembled their railway inspection train 'The Flying Banana'. Congratulations to them and well done to all the other teams on the day.