Bulgar 2-6-6-4 Steam Locomotive - Modelik - Scale 1:25

  • Hello everybody. My name is Dan Vadas and I'm from "down-under" Australia. My only language is English, so if this does not translate very well I apologize. This is the first model that I'm presenting on this site as I only joined up recently.


    Previous models I have built include HMS Hood, Mi24D Hind Russian Attack Helicopter, IJN Amatsukaze, Stug 40 Tank and a Spitfire (all from "Halinski"" as well as Bismarck ("GPM"), Sydney Opera House and several smaller free downloads of various subjects. If you want to take a look at any of them you can do so at Model Ship World where I am an Administrator. Click HERE which will take you to one of my posts in MSW. All my models can be accessed from the links in my Signature in any post. NOTE : You may need to join the site to see them - non-members have restricted access to many of the site's features. Membership is FREE.


    This model is from a kit by Modelik. It is of a 2-6-6-4 (1-6-2 in European designation) Steam Locomotive commonly called the "Bulgar". The originals were built in Germany and Poland between 1931 and 1943.
    Information about the loco can be found HERE. I also bought a couple of wagons that will be towed behind the loco when it is on display. Here are some pictures of the kit covers :




    The flat bed wagon is already finished, as I bought it from an Australian kit shop while I was waiting for the others to be delivered (I had to wait 12 weeks for delivery). I will open another Construction Report on it soon, and the other wagons will also get their own Reports when I build them.


    I have been working on the loco for about 5 weeks now, and have finished the main frames, both front and rear bogies, and all the wheels. I want to post some pictures of them all tomorrow. I won't go into very much detail on my work up to now, as another member, Stephan, is also building this model and is just a couple of steps ahead of me. His Report is worth a look, and I have used it several times when I could not fully understand the kit instructions. I thank him for that.


    That's all for today, it's almost midnight in Australia and I'm off to bed. See you tomorrow.


    Cheers, Danny

  • Two buildlogs for one machine. Kind of efficient :)


    btw: I guess one of the admins is going to ask you to reorder your pics.
    The preferred (or, as some see it: the only accepted way) is to place them two on a line, with a blank space between the two pics on the line, and a blank line between the pics. In that way the pics show nicely on all platforms/devices.


    Jan

  • OK Jan, how's that now? I had no idea, so thank you for the advice.


    By the way - Members can adjust the size of their screen by holding "Ctrl" and pressing "+" (plus sign) as many times as they wish. To return to the previous size hold "Ctrl" and press "-" (minus sign) until it gets back to where you want it. This feature can be used on any page in any forum or programme on your computer. But everyone probably knew that already grins 3 .


    Cheers, Danny

  • That's perfect, Dan, thank you! (says a happy admin....).


    Great to have you here at our forum with this impressive loco! Perhaps, the building report ("Baubericht") of Stephan can be interesting for you, he already started to build the locomotive. I'm looking forward to your report.


    Cheers,
    Claudia

  • Hallo Dan,
    correct me if I am wrong, but the wagon "czteroosiowa" for transporting logs is a narrow-gauged one, while the others are not.

    Liebe Grüsse an alle Mitkleber: Krisztián
    Leute, die Modellbögen kaufen denken, dass sie auch die Zeit kaufen, die für ihre Montage notwendig ist. Aber ich bin alt genug zu wissen, dass es nicht wahr ist.
    People buying model booklets think they also buy the time necessary for their assembly. But I am old enough to know it is not true at all. verlegen2 prost2

  • Hallo Dan,
    correct me if I am wrong, but the wagon "czteroosiowa" for transporting logs is a narrow-gauged one, while the others are not.

    Well spotted Kris, it is indeed a narrow gauge. At least it was originally - I converted it to Standard Gauge by simply widening the axles and their supports. I also moved the buffers from a single central one to two outer ones to match the other wagons in my "fleet".
    Here are a some pictures of the wagon. The logs were also my own creation (from scratch) :





    Claudia - "Perhaps, the building report ("Baubericht") of Stephan can be interesting for you". Actually Stephan's building report led me to this site when I Googled "Bulgar locomotive" about a month ago. His report has been of great value to me.


    Cheers, Danny

  • https://www.die-kartonmodellba…lik-im-ma%C3%9Fstab-1-25/Hello Dan,


    a warm welcome in our forum. Nice to have your here!


    The models you are currently buliding or that you have already built are very interesting. Last year I have also built the "wagon czteroosiowa" and showed it just a couple of days before here in the gallery I built the car in original narrow gauge.


    Greetings from the other side of the world to Austrailia,
    denis

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von denis () aus folgendem Grund: Link korrigiert

  • Hi Dan,


    interresting start of your report. Perfect organisation of the pictures daumen1 Nice and clean build of platform wagon. Modelik kits are really fun, I really like them.


    I had a look into you forum, you are working very precise and accurate. We all are happy to see your build also here. The more build reports, the better for other modeller.


    Regards.
    Stephan

  • Thank you for that corrected link Denis. It works now.


    Welcome to my build report Stephan, it's good to see you here. It's thanks to your own build report that I actually found this site in the first place when I Googled "Bulgar locomotive".


    Now for the promised Build Report of the locomotive itself. As I mentioned in an earlier post I started this model about 5 weeks ago, so I won't go into every detail of how I built it. Stephan's Report probably has some of the missing details if anyone wants to check them. We are almost at the same stage together at the moment.


    When I first ordered the kit from Modelik I also ordered two wagons and about 2 metres of rails on which I will display them. I also ordered extra bolt heads and rivets according to Modelik's suggestion, as well as all the laser-cut for each one. Or at least I THOUGHT that I'd ordered ALL the laser sets - somehow I didn't order the set for the locomotive itself, which I didn't find out until later on. This turned into a problem, as Modelik no longer showed the laser set for the Bulgar on their site when I realised my mistake - I may have bought their last kit. Using Google I eventually found another kit site (Jadar in Poland) that had several Bulgar laser sets, so I ordered one from them.


    While waiting for the laser set to arrive I started making the main frames, hand cutting two lots of 0.25mm card as reinforcement on each section of frame. Unfortunately this was too thin - I should have used THREE lots of card to come to a total thickness of 1.0mm - but I solved the problem eventually. Here are a couple of pictures of the main frames. I used some 3mm tubing through the axle holes to help in alignment and stop the pieces from shifting while I glued them together :




    The finished locomotive will be rather long as you can see - my Cutting Boards are A3 size, not the smaller A4. Total length is just under 700mm.


    A word or two about what I use for cutting paper and card.


    1. Most of the work is done with a Swann-Morton scalpel and #11 changeable blades, which I buy on Ebay in boxes of 100. I will probably use at least one full box of blades on this model, as I replace them as soon as they start getting blunt.


    2. Small diameter inside bends and/or squares are cut using a variety of "chisels" which I made from used Xacto blades. I ground them into sizes of 2mm, 1mm, 0.5mm and 0.25mm wide. If needed I will use a small diamond file to tidy up the cut. Each chisel has it's own Xacto handle to save swapping the blades when various width blades are needed on a piece.


    3. Holes in diameters from 0.5mm up to 4.5mm are made with a pair of hole punches from RP Toolz. Depending on the thickness and density of the card I sometimes use the punches to make discs, but the smaller sizes don't usually turn out very well and can sometimes delaminate, especially on softer card.


    4. I have a large amount of drills of nearly every conceivable size, including Number Drills from #1 to #80 as well as full sets of both Metric and Inch drills. These Printed Circuit Board drills are actually quite good for drilling card despite their "cheap" appearance. And they ARE cheap, depending on which site you buy them from (shop around and beware of Freight costs). They also seem to last forever. I have some of them in Carbide as well, but they tend to break easily. I have 5 or 6 Pin Vices to hold the drills.


    Back to the locomotive for a bit more in this post zwinker2 . My laser set arrived after a 2 week wait ( MUCH faster than the kit itself). I immediately started on the other main frame using the printed and laser cut pieces. This went MUCH faster than cutting all the reinforcement by hand - I had all the nine sections completed in a few hours , whereas it took me a full week to do the first side. Then I started gluing the sections together when I discovered another horrible mistake. In my haste, and it was getting late into the night, I had glued BOTH left and right 1mm thick laser cut pieces to each printed one, as I had done with the much thinner card to the other one. Oops rotwerd1 .


    Luckily I discovered the mistake fairly early before I had glued ALL the sections together. After about 5 hours work I had shaved off one thickness of card off each inner and outer section. I had decided that it was a lot easier to not use the middle section at all, although I had to cut a few pieces off it and fit them to the other two sections :



    Two frames finally completed. Despite my problem with gluing up too many pieces the right side finished up within 0.1mm of the thickness of the earlier left side - I think I can live with that daumen1 .



    This post is getting too long, so I will post another soon with details of how I cut and fit the bolt heads as well as further progress.


    Cheers, Danny

  • Great is your post. Never mind going into details because you never know which real, very beginner reads it and is unsure how to start. There are several of them. And such a thorough leading hand can be nothing but useful.

    Liebe Grüsse an alle Mitkleber: Krisztián
    Leute, die Modellbögen kaufen denken, dass sie auch die Zeit kaufen, die für ihre Montage notwendig ist. Aber ich bin alt genug zu wissen, dass es nicht wahr ist.
    People buying model booklets think they also buy the time necessary for their assembly. But I am old enough to know it is not true at all. verlegen2 prost2

  • 0.1mm of the thickness of the earlier left side

    Peanuts


    But one major topic: the glue! When I started 4 years ago ( lala1 ) I suddenly run into the problem that the glue I usually use does not really glue on that smooth surface. I´m using white glue and put som drops on the surface, because I also do rivets like this. But after drying, it was quite easy to remove them, without any damage of the surface. I tried a lot of glues, whitout good result, so I put the modell back to stock. Finally I found that the childreens UHU BastelKleber was strong enough to solve my problem. This year ....


    In your forum was reading that you use a white glue too, but with some special ingredients. Modelik produces still nice kits but again in digital print, so this is an interesting topic.


    By the way - here you can find 2 finished Bulgar Bear:


    http://modellbauer.forumieren.…-modelik-geb-von-holzkopf


    http://modellbauer.forumieren.…ar-modelik-125-von-lothar


    Maybe they will help you. You are much faster than I and from next Saturday, no progress during 5 weeks, because I´m changing my location again. And after that Í´m pretty sure that you passed me with high speed happy1


    Regards,
    Stephan

  • the glue I usually use does not really glue on that smooth surface.

    Neither does my "Studymate" PVA glue Stephan. The other seems to work better, "Mont Marte" is the brand name. It's a simple PVA Craft Glue that is acid-free, which seems to be important as it doesn't dissolve any paint, printing or art pen touch-ups. It's also a fair bit thicker than most PVA glues.


    Thanks for the two links, I've had a quick look at them and they'll come in useful. One of them is pretty good, the other not so much. I could spot a few mistakes he made even by only looking at a couple of pages.



    You are much faster than I and from next Saturday, no progress during 5 weeks, because I´m changing my location again. And after that Í´m pretty sure that you passed me with high speed

    Maybe that's because I'm retired and can spend up to 14 hours a day on my model happy1 . Living the dream.


    Cheers, Danny

  • Cutting and colouring the bolt heads on a Modelik kit. In this kit they come in a number of sizes from 0.8mm to 2.5mm. There appear to be enough to do the whole model, and are usually grouped, mostly in strips of 10, near the part they are used on near it on the part sheet. Here is my method for cutting and edge colouring them. Others may have better ways of doing it, but this works for me.


    First I cut the strip of heads and colour the edges and ends with a Brush style Pitt Artist Pen. It's important to colour the ends now as it makes it easier in the long term :


    The smaller size ones are almost touching each other, so I make one cut on each end bolt. Larger sizes need two cuts, one on each bolt :


    Then I cut the remaining triangles off each end bolt. The ends of the strip and the cut off bolt are then coloured again. The cut off bolt only needs to have two sides of the edge coloured by now which is easier than doing all of them at the same time :


    A tiny spot of glue, applied direct from my glue bottle is applied to the part. The glue bottle has a 0.5mm hole which leaves just the right amount (with a bit of practice). I usually do about 8 bolts at a time as the glue starts to dry too much if I try to do more. I pick the bolts up with the tip of my scalpel and place them in position :


    Cheers, Danny

  • Hi Dan,


    more or less the same how I do. But I´m even more lazy. Here you can check my method. (post 51) Quick translation: first I cut one side. then all 60° cuts - completely to the other side. Removing the triangles on this side. Painting. Putting on PostIt, cutting other side and then I can already remove the remaining trangles. Painting. Done. Some kind of cartridge belt.


    So I don´t have to handle single bolts until I need them. Also here I use the AquaColor, this seals also the sides so the card board does not dis-layer afterwards.


    Usually I glue the bolts heads on o.3 to 0.5 mm card bord.


    I also noticed that the bigger bolts are not touching each other. I decided to cut them slitghly bigger, so it´s still one cut to split them. You see, I´m a really lazy guy. happy 2


    I see that you also paint the glueing spot, you really take care to avoid white "blitzer".


    Cheers,
    Stephan

  • I'm a long way behind on posting updates - my apologies, other things have been getting in the way lately.
    While I was waiting on the laser sheets I made up a few other things - the brake suspension springs :



    The smoke box :



    And the front and rear bogies :



    I've also made all the wheels. I'll do another post about them a bit later.


    Cheers, Danny

  • More bits and pieces made - the main cranks :


    The two expansion (?) chambers. Here are some of the pieces of the shaft covers - a lot of these have already been made into sub-assemblies :


    This piece is wrong - the cover should have been rotated about 80 degrees. I cut it apart and fixed it after this picture was taken :


    A had a problem with this step. I don't know much about the workings of a real locomotive, my Polish/English translation of the instructions wasn't very good, the diagrams were unclear, and Stephan didn't mention anything about this in his build log because he got it right. I had glued the two wire shafts in solidly when they should have been free to slide in and out (at least the main shaft). If they couldn't slide the cranks would not have moved later on when I attached them. I had also made the main shaft in 3 pieces, with a paper roll in the middle section, and glued the four "legs" to the roll. So - I carefully cut some of it apart and started again :



    Now the shafts could work properly as you can see below. In one unit the shafts are in, and in the other they are out. They slide beautifully, I don't think they will be a problem later :


    I'll glue the name plaques on later so I don't damage the beautifully laser-engraved pieces. I used a gold Pitt Artist Pen to paint the lettering:


    Cheers, Danny

  • Hi Dan,


    as long the corrections can be done, no problem. Loooks good, but I think you glued this part 180° wrong:



    The flat side must be up, this is the platform where the slider-bar



    has to put on.


    Your plaque looks really great.


    Cheers,
    Stephan

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