Yo Rami! A small preview of the Italian sceneries

[kelticheart]

Hi everybody and Rami,

attached a couple of shots about where I am at with the Italian sceneries.

The Po river is now crossed by the most important bridges from the province of Alessandria to Ferrara, almost at the river delta on the Adriatic Sea. Bridges went under relentless tactical attacks, particularly in the second half of 1944, together with railroads and marshalling yards to disrupt any possible military traffic behind the Whermacht back.

Most of them were destroyed or severely damaged by the beginning of 1945 and the Po river was such a formidable natural obstacle that panic spread among the retreating Whermacht troops at the beginning of the Allied push to end the war by mid-April 1945.

Every year spring rains, always extremely abundant in this part of the country, added to snow melting on the Alps create a fearsome picture with the river running real fast and the water reaching almost the top of the artificial banks, that I assure you are quite high. It's like that even today, after an extremely rainy February and the water colour looks like a cup of white coffee. Fall and spring Po river floods are all but uncommon.

Winter of 1944-45 in Northern Italy saw severe snowfalls and a very rainy early spring. The Po river was filled to the brim, the front line collapsed on April 23rd, while the partisan high command called for a general upraise on April 25th. I heard atrocious accounts of panicked German soldiers fleeing the advancing Allied divisions and trying to cross the river even on top of hay bales, only to drown in a few minutes in the freezing strong stream, their corpses littering the river delta a couple of days later.

The first picture shows my final update of Piacenza-San Damiano airbase. The second one a near-miss hit on the Po river bridge between the provinces of Pavia and Alessandria, where I damaged one of the pylons.....darn'! Next time I'll get it!

Cheers!
KH

[Rami]

Good morning,

Yo, Stefano! It looks great! Keep up the good work...

[kelticheart]

Good morning,

Yo, Stefano! It looks great! Keep up the good work...

Hi there!

I could kick my butt because it never occurred to me to drive you to the San Damiano airbase, while you were visiting here. You could have been my witness that my effort to reproduce it in CFS2 is, at least, halfway decent!
Well, next time my friend, I am sure you will return to Europe one day or the other!

Cheers!
Stef

[highpockets]

Hmmm Looks great! Has anyone done any missions using the A-36 in Italy?

[CrisGer]

working with Red Hawke to get us some trains, there actually ARE train sets already created just found the links actually hosted here, FS Trains, supposedly for CFS, CFS2 and the FXs...

linkey here:

http://www.thefreeflightsite.com/FSRAIL.htm

and wolfie's train set:

(CFS2_Train_Set_01_a.zip) used to be here in the library not sure if it still is. that train on the first link the pasenger one with the nice steam engine is a british one what would never have been seen in France, if you do a re paint for France, italy or germany just paint the passenger cars all a darkish dull green with dark gray roofs.

[Blood_Hawk23]

Yup CrisGer and I are attempting to do more in the world of Trains. Not sure where we will end up with this project. It will be fun.

Kelti,
I knew we had a Master Gardener in our midst. That looks great.

[mvg3d]

..... if you do a re paint for France, italy or germany just paint the passenger cars all a darkish dull green with dark gray roofs.

Hi Friends,
here are some pics of Italian passenger cars and locos (electric and steam), You can see the colors adopted by Italian Railroad Company (Ferrovie dello Stato) from 1935 until 1960, the green color was abandoned in 1935.

COLORS :

Passenger Cars :
Body and Bumpers : Dark Brown ("Castano" color)
Windows area : Light Brown ("Isabella" color)
Roof : Aluminium

Goods Cars :
Body and Bumpers : Dark Reddish Brown ("Rosso Vagone" color)
Roof : Aluminium

Steam Locos :
Body and Bumpers : Black
Frame : Dark Red
Wheels : Dark Red with White band
Front Bar : Red

Electric Locos :
Body and Bumpers : Light Brown
Frame and Wheels : Dark Brown
Roof : Dark Brown
Front Bar : Red

[kelticheart]

Yup CrisGer and I are attempting to do more in the world of Trains. Not sure where we will end up with this project. It will be fun.

Kelti,
I knew we had a Master Gardener in our midst. That looks great.

Thanks, BH!

Hey, I did download some of the RR for CFS2 material from The Free Flight site, but I haven't had the time to study it and install it properly.

What's the impact on the simulation framerate?

And our good mvg3d is absolutely right: dark and light brown were the dominant colours of Italian RR cars and electric engines until the mid-1960's. I commuted everyday by train to high school in the early 1970's and there were still some brown 2nd class cars around. My rear-end still hurts when I think how hard the solid wooden seats were!

Cheers!
KH

[Blood_Hawk23]

It shouldn't impact the frame rate very much, if at all. The FSrails uses APIs and Macros for most of the scenery. actually they could be used with FSSC. The only thing is they will be non destroyable. The major track sections could be laid out. then we could use the scenery objects for the sections we want to have destroyable.

I've figured out how to setup the area. you have to find your northern, southern, eastern and western dd:mm:ss cords. the hard part will be placing the track. as you will need to know the elevation. the plus side of it is you can place 1000m long sections with single through quad widths.

I would suggest finding a know area then get all of your info from google earth or from CFS2. you'll want your heading and elevations over the whole section.

As far as having the trains move, well it works for FS2000 but it may not for CFS2.

Let me know if you figure it out some more.

[No Dice]

Hey Blood Hawk,
You might try using the Cell Grid program to help in setting up the cords, I find it to be a life saver.

http://www.thefreeflightsite.com/Design.htm

Dave

[CrisGer]

thanks for the info on Italian Trains, i actually design and make routes and equipment for the steam era Italian routes and know them well. Yes there were both brown, blue, gray and some green cars the main body of cars were green until 1935.. and some during the war were used for transport that had been reserve. That was why i suggested Green as a generic colour if there was not time and energy to do more. But brown and maroon were used widely as noted thanks I too was in Italy in teh 70s when i lived in Venezia and loved it, the people, food and country were amazing and as a young artist it was heaven. I esp loved the steam trains i found here and there still operating.

here are some textures I made for the Golden Arrow and Orient Express...



and activities I designed for a 1900 steam route from Italy.... Porrettana Firenze-Bologna 1900 by the great Italian foute maker Grassi.

[CrisGer]

some italian passenger cars

1927



1921-1930x



1928



1931



http://www.ildeposito.net/

go to downloads and then to Locamotive Vapore or carrozze (passenger cars)

[Captain Kurt]

So what sim is this?

[CrisGer]

Microsoft Train Simulator... been studying and making mods for it along with the flight sims and some naval sims for some while. We are updating MSTS to something called Open Rails with improved coding and graphics.

[kelticheart]

thanks for the info on Italian Trains, i actually design and make routes and equipment for the steam era Italian routes and know them well. Yes there were both brown, blue, gray and some green cars the main body of cars were green until 1935.. and some during the war were used for transport that had been reserve. That was why i suggested Green as a generic colour if there was not time and energy to do more. But brown and maroon were used widely as noted thanks I too was in Italy in teh 70s when i lived in Venezia and loved it, the people, food and country were amazing and as a young artist it was heaven. I esp loved the steam trains i found here and there still operating.

here are some textures I made for the Golden Arrow and Orient Express...



and activities I designed for a 1900 steam route from Italy.... Porrettana Firenze-Bologna 1900 by the great Italian foute maker Grassi.

THANK YOU CRISGER, FOR THE ABOVE SPLENDID PICTURES!

I rode the Porrettana track several times on my way to Firenze, it looks amazingly real and similar to hundreds of mountain railroad viaducts we have here in the Appennini mountains.

RAMI!

Take a look at the last shot: this is what I meant in my PM to you for the looks of an Italian/European marshalling yard with the tracks grouped together and the control buildings/warehouses surrounding them! The above should be a good inspiration for the project you are currently working on.

There are several brick/stone buildings in Canion's ETO object library that look very similar to the above ones!

Cheers!
KH

[kelticheart]

Here's something to substantiate the previews for your weekend testing, my interpretation of Achim's new Italian scenery, Northern Italy, both gsl and layout files:

• Bologna - San Lazzaro
• Brescia - Ghedi
• Verona - Villafranca
• Piacenza - San Damiano
• new bridges over the Po river west of Piacenza: Castel San Giovanni and Pavia

All of the above is pretty much completed, but still beta. Few changes may occur should I decide to change something, but the major layout is definitive.

I haven't changed Reggio Emilia and the Reggiane factory, but I added it in here for whoever missed my last August 2013 thread attachments.
The bridges over the Po river in Piacenza, Cremona and Casalmaggiore (MN) are all still the same as the ones attached to last summer thread.

Mandatory for correct viewing of the sceneries and testings is having installed:

1. the latest release of Achim's Italian sceneries,
2. all of the following addon libraries, MaskRider/Lindsay Watts', Wolfi's, Canion's and Pen32Win's own AF Allied airport buildings plus his Burns' BoB lib update,
3. SdC's ETO land textures,
4. Captain Kurt's ETO repaints for the stock CFS2 objects.
5. my textures for MaskRider/Lindsay Watts' library, which turn PTO bamboo buildings into ETO wood boarded ones (posted to last summer thread)

Finally, if you do not want to screw up your installs, rename your current \GSL cfs2.gsl to whateversuitsyou.gsl, grab an empty cfs2.gsl and add to it the below gsl sceneries using Wright's GSL management utility, provided in every gsl-based scenery uploaded here. Last but not least, in Achim's recent Italian scenery update.
It this way, you'll have a test-dedicated cfs2.gsl file that will not interfere with anything else.

I am still working on Ferrara because it has changed completely in Achim's latest release, to whom goes all of my unending gratitude for putting up with all of my suggestions and comments. Achim's new Ferrara scenery reflects exactly its WWII location, still there nowadays.

There will be more Po bridges in the Ferrara area and I am still trying to figure out whether the oil refinery that can be seen today North of the city, just before the main road bridge over the Po river, was there during WWII, too. I scrapped the refinery (owned today by Q8) in Cremona, because it was built in the early 1950's. It would have been a juicy, yet unreal, target for the 15th USAAF B-24s....

To complete Northern Italian R.S.I airports I will work on Milano - Linate, Torino - Venaria Reale and Treviso soon.

Future comments and suggestions will be, obviously, very welcome. One day in the near future everything will be bundled in a proper addon pack.

Cheers!
KH

[Blood_Hawk23]

Hey Kelti,

Anything that was attached to a thread should be re uploaded. Since all of the thread attachments were lost. You should actually just add it to the Library.

[kelticheart]

Hey Kelti,

Anything that was attached to a thread should be re uploaded. Since all of the thread attachments were lost. You should actually just add it to the Library.

Sure, BH!

Like I said, when this project will be completed.... I'll upload it in a whole pack. For the time being I am just offering something to try out.

I had forgotten we had a few problems here, I'll re-attach what's missing on next Monday.

Have a good weekend!
KH

[Blood_Hawk23]

Sure, BH!

Like I said, when this project will be completed.... I'll upload it in a whole pack. For the time being I am just offering something to try out.

I had forgotten we had a few problems here, I'll re-attach what's missing on next Monday.

Have a good weekend!
KH

Sounds good. You have a good weekend as well.

So i'm going to try and get a stretch of rail started. Then see how it looks. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Rami]

Stefano,

Thank you very much for these...I will try to test them on my home PC this weekend...unfortunately my laptop kicked the bucket.

One question...should I remove the old GSL scenery for the Po River Valley that included the Reggiane factory?

[CrisGer]

sounds like great work, i have worked on the same routes in the train sim you are discussing. what fun. glad you didnt mind my posting those pictures...i love the Italian routes and the amazing work that went into building them and what targets they must have been

here is a typical view of a 1940s Italian RR line with typical pre 1935 change to the brown livery...



another view of a marshaling yard:



this was how they got the trains over some of the high passes, with helper engines pushing from the rear..



and one more pictures of the amazing viaducts...imagine working to build them and one air strike could take them down in seconds...

[CrisGer]

here are bombing photos of Ferrara from WWII





http://miles.forumcommunity.net/?t=54810749

scroll down to a post by
mufasa2
Posted on 25/7/2013, 12:41


This very interesting site has photos of Itlailan RR Bomb attacks and modern views of Ferrara and other target cities may help you

http://www.reddog1944.com/Konigsberg_David.htm

[CrisGer]

and for reference a similar RR viaduct destroyed across the Adriatic in Yugoslavia:

http://www.warwingsart.com/12thAirForce/borovnica.html

[kelticheart]

...One question...should I remove the old GSL scenery for the Po River Valley that included the Reggiane factory?

No, I did not change Reggio Emilia. It still has the Reggiane Factory, which is not only a target, but a distinctive part of the airport area. When arriving by train at the Reggio Emilia station, the Reggiane Factory dominates the landscape on the other side of the marshalling yard. The airport could be seen from the train station in the 1940's and 1950's, now it's hidden by all of the houses that were built in between afterwards.

I included it for those who still haven't got it.

Cheers!
Stef

[Blood_Hawk23]

FSrail isn't very nice to me. I had about 10miles or so layed out. went and saved it. Went back the next day and it loaded up blank. so I did it all again this time tried to compile it into a bgl and the bgl is blank. it reads 0kb. not sure whats going on with it but its not liking me. I think I might try the APIs in FSSC and see it it works.