More About Dust Seals

I've been away on various jaunts and so haven't written here for a while, and haven't done a lot at the railway either.

A few weeks ago I finished fettling the dust-seals for the wagon's axle-boxes.

The first job was to test fit each seal to its respective axle-box. I numbered them all because I found that each one fitted slightly differently, but they were all a bit like this:



I found that the shoulders of the seals were not quite high enough to engage against a protrusion inside the axle-box body. So they'd needed raising, which I did by gluing strips of wood on the tops of the shoulders:



You can see the strips of wood there. Once they were well glued in I had to check each seal against its axle-box, sanding off the extra wood until the seal was a snug fit.

Finally each seal had to have a protective metal strip fixed to each cheek to prevent undue wear and tear in use from the steel pin that holds the seal in place:



The seals are now all finished and in place on the wagon with their bottom surfaces flush to the bottoms of the axle-boxes.