Quote:
Originally Posted by another_guest
Not sure anymore since it's probably been more than a decade since I played this, but on the hardest difficulty levels I usually started in Europe, connecting the 2 biggest cities in the Belgium / Netherlands area (e.g. Antwerp, Brussels) and if the passenger and mail volume allowed it, have 2 trains run between those stations. I would then branch from the biggest town to another big one (e.g. further North in the Netherlands or South to France), this time only 1 train because 2 would drain the city that's shared between those routes. Provided I have the cash, I'd then buy a train to run the longest route between those 3 cities, on highest priority.
By all means avoid steep grades in the early stages because those trains can't cope with them. Similarly, try to go for a train that runs at high speeds with 2-3 carriages since speed is key to get a decent income and run a profit in the end.
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OK, I was trying Western US. I can see why you advise Europe. Bigger cities, faster trains, and much easier terrain. This doesn't much affect the level of competition, so much as the raw profitability. I was having a real problem with the West. It seems like freight routes in particular just can't pay for themselves, even when you run big east/west routes (fares are higher for east/west than north/south). So for the West, I put your 2 trains per route idea to work, and just stuck with mail and passengers. It seems that microing the first fiscal year of a route is important (give all trains on a route "proceed" orders at the stations, and double-track the exact square at which they would crash). This maximizes the speed of service during the crucial first years, when fares are doubled. The double fares also make the company stock price go way above what it should be. To take advantage of this, I took out a bunch of bonds and loaded up on stock before earnings got reported.
The mail and passengers thing is kind of unfortunate... I was looking forward to making more interesting freight routes but if the rather disappointing fares don't kill you, the fact that industries seem to shut down all the time will!