Hello,
I may be able to purchase some nice Liliput wagons from I'm guessing 1980-90 ish vintage. Usually I stay away from anything other than Marklin because of derailment issues etc. I don't want to mess with changing wheels and so on.
Does anyone have any experience with these on M-track?? Or should I not bother?

Thanks

Mikey

I have struggled with non-Mârklin rolling stock for a long time (particularly with Liliput, because I found them so nice at the time, but I could never get them to work properly..) , until I found the solution to 99.5% of the cases.
All you need is to adjust the (inner) spacing betweeen flanges to the Märklin spec of 13.8 mm .
That simple.
You need a Gauge Fohrmann HO gauge and a mini wheel press/puller Mini wheel spacer/press
That's it.
Anything else may be trouble with the bogies or coupling mechanisms, but that is not Märklin specific!

Good luck

Cheers

Jacques

Another thing to be aware of is the riding width of the Marklin wheel is wider than some of the other makes [ some Roco or Trix ], so is you squeeze the wheels together to get the right inside fit, then those wheels can fall in between the rails. The first ones I had trouble with were Lima, which is a product I steer clear of now.
My first go at fixing these problems [ before I understood the 2 rail wheels were of a different caliber ] was to tweek the guide rail on the points so that the outer wheel would ride correctly over the track without mounting the rail on the inner curve of the points. [I put photos of my points somewhere on this forum a few years ago ]. I found the points with the plastic guide, didn't need to be corrected [ as someone had asked ].

Things to watch for are all the wheels [ inner spacing and ride width ], and buffers with 8 wheeled coaches where close couplers are used.

If the ride width of any wheel is less than Marklin, then better to go with the Marklin transplant.

Dereck

I have many Lilliput wagons, and in every case I have found that replacing the wheels with the Lilliput AC equivalents solves all problems. The wheel sets are cheap and very easy to swap. I find it's not worth the effort of trying to measure and adjust the back-to-back dimensions of the existing wheels.

I find the same is true for Piko wagons. Roco, Jouef, Lima, and Rivarossi wagons run OK with their original wheels on my C-track layout.

You're totally right Ray!
Get the 3 rail wheels on the new vehicle when you can and be done.
I wasn't clear maybe, but I was referring to "second hand" equipment, the stuff you find at a swap meet or on the second hand market place.
It's not always simple to find the correct 3 rail axles for older stock, so regauging is a good solution then.
And inexpensive: once you have the tools, you're set for life!
Hope this helps

Thank you gentlemen for all the info.
Me thinkst I will pass on the purchase of Liliput wagons at this time. I have more rolling stock than I know what to do with. While I do not have the Frohman tools yet I will be getting them because I have a few Hag Loks which need wheel adjustment (to wide). I agree these tools are a must have.

Thanks again,
Mikey

Yau are right Mike.
In fact there was also a problem using older HAG 2-rail locos on Code 80 track!
The flanges here were too "deep" and literally bounced over the ties!
The Fohrmann tool needed here was a lathe cutting tool , and the lathe that goes along with it!

In all the talk about the wheel adjusting tools I got the urge to go poking around Fohrmann again, because, well I'm a man and thats what men covet: tools. Oooh shiney!

And soon as that I've got 250€ worth of stuff in the car. And then I hit the wall again as I did years ago with their website not supporting delivery outside of the EU. I wish they really would update that website software to provide a pull-down country outside of the EU in the address field which then locks down the order to be sent to them (ala prepay) to generate an ex-VAT invoice and payment request. Thats what one needs to do to get the stuff to, say the USA. They responded as such with an email to my asking about how I order to the US... so IF your outside of the EU and don't remember how it works, at checkout you can only select EU countries. So pick any one (I had germany, but the rest of my address was my US address) - and I chose "prepay" and put comments in the NOTES part of the checkout to have then generate an ex-VAT invoice for delivery to <your country>. That should do it.