A friend in Holton le Clay sent me a link to your video.. Lovely to see what the station looked like and the traffic that used it. Enjoyed viewing the liveries of yesteryear
The background barking of your border collies brings back childhood memories of our family collies. Love the footage, I have fond memories of these locos.
I've visited this station a few times since moving to Sleaford from Birmingham, has been a little disappointing i feel when I've been but you can get excellent views if you go outside the station and up the hill towards Melton Ross, this station is almost unrecognizable nowadays from this footage!
A couple thoughts on the pairs issue: 1) they weren't 'that' powerful but they were lightweight so could run on most routes (especially poorly maintained colliery tracks). 2) The single cab made them a bugger to drive 'nose first', so they were coupled nose to nose. Also, I reckon that if you look at one of its successors (the class 58), it's basically a 'cut and shut' of two class 20s (flat cab end with walkway alongside engine compartment), and now the class 70 is a more powerful class 58.
Another reason is that when the 20s were built, there were a lot of jobs that only needed 1,000hp and many heavier trains were not fitted with continuous brakes so a pair of smaller locos had a higher brake power than one bigger one.
One of the reasons that I was given is that as fully fitted trains became the norm and the brake can was phased out. The guard would usually sit in the rear can. Obviously this was not possible on a single class 20 so the second was added. This also got around the visibility issues as state previously.
Watching this, given its date has made me realise just how old the class 60's are. I remember the first ones running test trains ! Also, something I've not given any thought to before (mainly because we never had any where I live) Why are Class 20's always in pairs, If they needed more power, why didn't they build them bigger ? Great vid by the way !
On the barking - gospel oak line this time last year, they had a 37 shadowing class 710 emus on test- that left a stink of diesel behind and brought back memories of when 37/47 diesels dominated freight workings
