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To fulfill various transportation needs, over 170 different types of freight wagons are currently employed, but this presents a challenge to railroad operators. In order to reduce the number of different designs and to allow a flexible response to changing customer needs and markets, DB Cargo is proposing a concept wherein a freight wagon is made up of an underframe with bogies and swappable, customer-specific superstructures. For the underframes, which are the focus of this article, a highly modular design concept has been derived. This design consists of bogie modules and middle modules in various lengths, which in turn are assembled using a varying number of identical submiddle- modules. With these building blocks, wagons covering all common lengths can be created. The structural concepts created for these underframes are then optimized and dimensioned. The resulting underframes achieve a high degree of lightweight design, despite a high modularity and a large payload capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]