Lego-compatible railway truck, LGB, Bausteinwagen (Marklin 94063)
Marklin make a Lego-compatible twelve-stud-wide model railway flatbed wagon base for LGB garden railways, with wheels set at 45mm (gauge 1 spacing), article no. 95063.
Specifications
The wagon has a red, blocky base 28 studs long and 12 studs wide (which comes ut as a nominal base area of 224×96mm), embedded in an other-wise-black frame, with a single central buffer at each end.
Lego plus LGB
This product is actually a really good idea!
One of the problems with a niche "garden railway" market like LGB is that you may not be able to buy exactly the sort of rolling stock that you want. This encourages people to buy wagons and "hack" them ... but why not just buy a basic flatbed base and build when you want on it using Lego?
Lego meets the LGB criterion of being waterproof and weatherproof, and is washable, and since the colours are moulded into the plastic, you don't have to worry about paint coming off in response to extreme weather changes.
About the only problem with using Lego to build LGB rolling stock is the sheer expense of using enough Lego to build boxes that large ... which is a little bit wasteful if all you want is a simple coal wagon.
Lego mountings on non-Lego superstructure
Swappable superstructure
A different take on Lego compatibility is to build simple wagons like coal trucks conventionally, using wood and paint, but to attach them to the base using Lego. The custom superstructure can have small Lego strips fixed to the underside, which plug and detach from the base.
This approach lets you experiment with building different types of rolling-stock more cheaply, without having to buy a new base each time. You can then run the base with your choice of different superstructures, and defer a decision to buy an additional base to run multiples.
Construction
A useful feature of Lego plates (two studs wide, or wider) is the "rings" on the underside. If you drill a hole in the centre of a ring, you can pass a screw through the hole that can be screwed into the custom superstructure. The ring interior is the region that never fouls the studs, and the ring height tells you how deep you have to place the screw for the results to be flush (which might need some additional countersinking). The main problem with using plate attachments and screws is the tendency of the screws to move as you tighten them, which can cause the plates to misalign. One way around this is to keep the screws a little loose to allow some "play" in the plates, or you can try gluing. The advantage of gluing is that the plates can be positioned on the base and the superstructure glued to the plates, ensuring a perfect alignment. The danger of this method is that excess glue can drip down and fix the structure together permanently!
A way around this would be to buy some cheap Lego-compatible base plate (third-party, non-Lego) for a few quid, locate your plates on that while gluing, and if it all goes wrong and the glue runs, you can hack the disposable plate apart to rescue your superstructure without damaging the expensive Marklin flatbed. Alternatively, a cheap plate could have screwdriver holes drilled into it so that you could screw the mounting plates to the superstructure while they were still firmly located on an 8mm grid.
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