BRUTEs

BRUTE stands for British Railway Universal Trolley Equipment, and was basically a cage on wheels for moving parcels and other items around a station. Some wagons were converted so that BRUTEs could be wheeled straight on, reducing handling. Swindon Works was producing about 200 of these a week in the mid-sixties.

This is the model in 1:76 scale. I tried 1:148 for N gauge at the same time, but only the bases printed.


Even at the larger scale, there were print issues. The one at the back has gone very wrong. Others have minor issues, but I think are still useable. the prototypes were pretty battered.

From Blender:


From a modelling perspective, what makes this interesting is that one side had a canvas curtain, and that meant I had to learn about the "cloth" modifier in Blender. Each curtain is a sub-divided plane, with a curve modifier to give depth. The cloth modifier is added after that. I used the defaults, except that I added weight. Then I hit play on the animation toolbar, and the plane collapsed like a cloth!

Vertices can be pinned (the "Shape" section on the "Physics" tab), and the animation stopped at a suitable point. 

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