Give and Take - Combining 2 LGB wagons

Last year I bought several G-scale LGB wagons cheaply second hand for turning them into military rollingstock to run in my 16mm scale German Heeresfeldbahn trains or British WDLR trains. Some of these wagons were pretty 'scruffy'. For this project I pulled 2 wagons out of the pile of well used wagons. Both of them actually belongs to LGB's 'Toy Train Series':

Firstly I couldn't keep that colorful livery on the tank car in a military train where most cars are grey-ish. Besides I didn't like the tank's off center position on the wagon nor the brakeman's platform. -I already have a tank car with a brakeman's platform and wanted this to be different:

The second wagon is actually one of those I least like from the LGB-range and I actually bought it just to get the metal wheels it came with (as they costs about twice as much new than whole this purchase together). I toyed with the idea to replace the wheels with some plastic ones after I removed the metal ones and keep the wagon, give it a repaint and use it. But it was in a very sorrow condition covered in thick house paint, missing a coupling, buffer and it's brakeman's platform railings + one step:

While I was working on this project I found a drawing of a similar wagon in a book about German Heeresfeldbahnen in WWII, and decided to try to get it back in running condition again and use it with my Heeresfeldbahn trains:

As I wrote earlier, both these wagons are from LGB's inexpensive 'Toy Train Series' originally aimed for children's entry to this scale/gauge. I guess LGB made these wagons based upon the same chassis or parts to keeps things 'cheap'. This means that the chassis are interchangeable between the two wagons, meaning that the open plank wagon can be placed on the chassis with the brakeman's platform and steps and the tank car vice versa. Due to this I decided to keep the open plank wagon and remodel it. First I painted both 'tops' in 2 different gray shades...

...before assembling them on the their opposite chassis:

The tank could easily be moved and fixed in a position more to the center of the wagon:

Then I painted the details and gave them a light weathering:

Ironically, while working on this project LGB/ Märklin re-released the same (Toy Train) tank car in grey as one of their 2026 news after been out of production for a while. It has nice lettering and numbering, but costs about 4 times more than my own project. 

On the open plank wagon I picked out some individual boards in different colours to give a hint that some of them have been replaced. Bars, frames and hinges were painted black and everything was given a wash of black and rust and finally drybrushed to look aged:

Since this is the wagon I was initially least found of in the LGB-range, I decided to add some load to it to make it more interesting. It had to be some kind of military cargo and preferably some German ones as I found a German prototype for this wagon. The load was not to be permanently fixed as I wanted it to be interchangeable. A German tank would make a spectacular load, but this was wrong kind of wagon for that. - Besides loads like that are way too heavy and large for narrow gauge railways. But what about parts for a tank that would need to replaced from time to time? Parts like an engine? The Maybach HL230 engine was used in Tiger I, Tiger, II, Panther, Jagdpanther and Jagdtiger tanks and on Thingiverse I found a free kit I re-scaled to 1:19 scale and 3D-printed:

I made 3 kits as this is how many this wagon can carry in both volume and weight (max 5000 kg):

I made a cargo frames for them so they would sit level and fit snuggle into the railway wagon:

Then they were secured to the frame:

I guess this load depicts well used engines going back from the front, or newly overhauled engines going back to the front. Perhaps for a coming (panzer)  offensive? 

So by combining these 2 'Toy Train' wagons by LGB I didn't just get more prototypical wagons for my growing collection of military railway cars, but I also did so in the most budget way possible. So can you, as these Toy Trains wagons are usually very available and cheap second hand. 

If you have rollingstock from LGB, have a look what chassis are the same, how they are 'altered' from the factory and what kind of wagons they fit for. This will allow you to very easily alter and personalize your own LGB stock. What I did in this case was probably the most simple of them.