6. Class 60 - The Power to Move Mountains

We all remember the Steadfast class of locomotive don’t we? Come on, you know, that all-encompassing brand name given to the class 60s, used by BR and enthusiasts alike, and still used to this day? Well, this video gives that impression. In reality it is training material for the drivers conversion course onto the new locos, but it is interspersed with an unspecified Rory McGrath alike giving some corporate spiel about the new ’Steadfasts’. Interestingly, the class are described as having an ability to move mountains of ’coal, steel and general freight’, so pretty much all the industries that Thatcher had put into decline, going someway to explain why only a handful of the hundred built are ever required for traffic. The video starts with a Western style stand off (the sort between a cowboy and an Indian, not between hydraulic and electric transmission) between a driver and his new steed. The loco is then introduced with powerful footage of tug 2 on a rake of TEA wago