Tyseley: In The Bleak Midwinter...

"In the Bleak Midwinter, frosty wind made moan" - quite right...today was freezing! Regular readers will know that I regularly reference the 1872 poem as it just seems so wonderfully appropriate in these conditions. After breakfast at the Tyseley Corner Café this morning, we continued the journey to Tyseley for a day in the shed. A hardy gang of volunteers had gathered for a very cold day amongst the silent steeds. There was some stay knocking going on making the works a living nightmare as this inescapable banging drives itself into your very soul - earplugs were very much necessary! A couple of us were put to work today performing some maintenance tasks on the smallest in Tyseley's fleet: Peckett No2004. This pretty W7 0-4-0 is a lovely little tool and shows just how nice a well preserved Peckett in original condition can be. All around, work was on going with various other locomotives. After a good day on the Peckett, I left for home at around 3:30pm to curl up by the fire with a beer...