Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Rainhill trials ran from the 6th to the 14th of October 1829 on a straight, level mile of track at Rainhill in Lancashire, now part of Merseyside. The specific running section was at Kenrick's Cross, on the mile east from the Manchester side of Rainhill Bridge.
Rocket, designed by George and Robert Stephenson and built by Robert Stephenson and Company, won the Rainhill trials. It was the only locomotive to complete the required runs and was awarded the five-hundred-pound prize. The Stephensons were also given the contract to produce locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
Novelty reached twenty-eight miles per hour on the first day and was the crowd favourite before mechanical failure ended its run. Rocket averaged twelve miles per hour across the trials while hauling thirteen tons, achieved a top speed of thirty miles per hour under load, and ran at thirty-two miles per hour when its tender was detached on the fifth day.
Novelty was not formally disqualified but had to withdraw after a damaged boiler pipe could not be properly repaired on site. It ran the day after the initial damage and reached fifteen miles per hour before the repaired pipe failed again, causing damage severe enough that the locomotive had to be withdrawn from the competition.
Three engineers were appointed as judges: John Urpeth Rastrick, a locomotive engineer from Stourbridge; Nicholas Wood, a mining engineer from Killingworth with considerable locomotive design experience; and John Kennedy, a Manchester cotton spinner and major proponent of the railway.
A 2002 restaging of the Rainhill trials using replica locomotives was held on the Llangollen Railway in Wales. Neither Sans Pareil nor Novelty completed the course in the re-enactment. Calculations confirmed that Rocket would still have won, with Novelty's firebox design allowing clinker buildup that gradually slowed it to a halt. The restaging was the subject of a 2003 BBC Timewatch documentary.