First Time At Tyseley In 2020...

Good evening all, a very Happy New Year and welcome back. The festive season was a pretty typical one for me: too much food, too much drink and a couple of steam trains thrown in for good measure. Regular readers (if I have any left) will notice that 2019 was a very sparse year as far as the blog was concerned. Basically, I overdid it! In 2019 I started a new job, we bought a new house and we booked our wedding. Couple that with a substantial amount of decorating and of course plenty of steam action, the blog has been placed on the backburner. Of course, there were a lot more outings in 2019 than the blog portrays and one day I do hope to catch it all up. Therefore, hopefully one day this paragraph will become irrelevant! But, for now, I'm giving 2020 a fresh start from the first outing which was of course, Tyseley. Today I took part in the first of the volunteer Saturday working parties of the year, helping on and around No7029 "Clun Castle", of 1950. The GWR 4-6-0 was to be ashed today following our final-pre Christmas excursion to York and back on December 21st...

My job was to head into the cold Castles firebox and wet down the ashes thoroughly before Batesy pulled the pins and dropped it into the pit. The engines are usually ashed out soon after the trip but, with many days steady cooling required and the Christmas break, this was the first opportunity to do it. The wetter you can get the ash, the less dust gets thrown up against the paintwork and valve gear when you drop it. We soak the ashes down very thoroughly indeed! With this job done, the weather was changing from blue skies to threatening clouds and so "Clun" was duly pushed back inside by the Class 08 shunter. She looked a picture under the shed lights...

It was nice to be back at 84E after the Christmas stand down and I look forward to seeing what 2020 brings. Who knows where we'll end up. For now though, it was time to head home to escape the winter chill...