Some photos of a conversion of Piko 131 DR to 07 BDZ, made in Bulgaria. The original 07.032 has worked in Greece in 2003. The finish of the model is a little "curly" in comparison to "industrial" models. Perhaps you can see best on the second photo what I want to say. Decals (BDZ-Logo), tampography (other inscriptions) and etched plates are of good quality. I apologize for the poor quality of the photos, it's because 1. I don't have a good camera and 2. I'm not a good photographer But I like my Ludmilla very much!
I just can't stop looking at these photos. That Ludmilla is so attractively ugly!!!!!!! like all these Eastern Europeans creations, our Ganzes and Craiovas included
Not the Craiova most of you are looking for, but the original was also produced by Electroputere Craiova, and was also running in Greece Conversion made by the people from railtune.
I can't see this one at their site. On which model is it based?
The model of Bulgarian class 06 is based on Tillig 72095, which is no longer available From time to time, it can be found second-hand at eBay, for at least 300 EUR. Plus, the original Tillig model had optical and technical defects, it was running very bad, like a "drunken duck" (Romanian forum) or a "goose" (Railtune Bulgaria).
I assume this model was the successor to the old PIKO one which had Pizza cutters for wheels. That one could only run on code 100 track and NOT on code 75. I never tried it on code 83.
before 2005 there was no model of this type. The history of this model is an odyssey anyway. It was first announced in 2001 by german company geconvvm (which doesn't exist any more). First intention was to produce it in Romania, finally it was produced by Kemo in China. Later it was comercialized by Tillig, but apparently coming from the same molds as the gecon model. It had some major defects, e.g. the "gap" in the loco's body. The lower of the part was one piece with the chassis, like some Trix models from the 60s. Romanian modelers were quite disappointed, for them it meant to give half of a moth's salary for a model which for the same money could have been realized more appropriate. The Greeks were better off with their Alphatrains models. I read in a German forum some posts about the Adtranz models that stated that they were among the best industrial models concerning their running qualities. About the BDZ 07 based on the new Piko Ludmilla class 130/131 I can say that running characteristics are good, no problem at least on code 83.