Barely making profit due to stupid high maintenance costs

[Slave Knight]

I have 2 train lines running, one bringing rocks to a factory and the other supply 2 towns each taking 150 bricks. when the run completes i get 14mil payout but im paying 7-8 million in just maintenance costs making it a very slow process to pay off the load and impossible to expand until i pay off the loan

Train A is 5 cars long and cost 1.7mil a year
Train B is 16 cars long cost 6mil a year
Is there a way to drive down these costs? they are 29 years old and selling wont give back enough money to buy a cheaper engine
My games year is 2030

[Tsubame ⭐]

No, there isn't an easy way to drive maintenance down.

7 mil profit is not bad; just fast forward the game and let the cash come in.

[ClearchusOfSparta]

A couple of things you can check for. The max speed of the loco and the wagons its pulling. Try to match them as much as you can but also check that the track speed will allow for the top speed of your complete vehicle. For example, a train with a top speed of 90 pulling wagons that do 75, wagons that do 100 with a loco only capable of 65 or a complete train and wagons capable of 100 running on track with a max speed of 70. All of these will impact the costs in some way.
Hope this is helpful.

[larry_roberts]

Switch to High Maintenance until the vehicles get back to very good condition then switch back to Normal Maintenance. I know this is a pain it should be done automatically.

[Metacritical]

Originally posted by larry_roberts:

Switch to High Maintenance until the vehicles get back to very good condition then switch back to Normal Maintenance. I know this is a pain it should be done automatically.

why? when i switch my vehicles to very high maintenance, i want them to stay on very high. i do not want them, for some reason, to temporarily disable maintenance.

[Slave Knight]

I got stuck in a loop of being 7mil in debt and getting out of debt by 2mil, i guess i tried expanding to early so i just started a new game

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by Slave Knight Dong:

I got stuck in a loop of being 7mil in debt and getting out of debt by 2mil, i guess i tried expanding to early so i just started a new game

Are you by any chance replacing your vehicles when they get old? Because you are not meant to be doing that. There is a maintenance slider that you can increase to improve a vehicles condition back to brand new. It is much cheaper than buying a new vehicle everytime they get old. And for cargo lines it isn't even important if the vehicle is in bad condition as the only downside to bad condition vehicles is that they emit more emissions which only affects residential buildings in towns.

[Slave Knight]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

Originally posted by Slave Knight Dong:

I got stuck in a loop of being 7mil in debt and getting out of debt by 2mil, i guess i tried expanding to early so i just started a new game

Are you by any chance replacing your vehicles when they get old? Because you are not meant to be doing that. There is a maintenance slider that you can increase to improve a vehicles condition back to brand new. It is much cheaper than buying a new vehicle everytime they get old. And for cargo lines it isn't even important if the vehicle is in bad condition as the only downside to bad condition vehicles is that they emit more emissions which only affects residential buildings in towns.

Yeah ive been replacing them lol, i didnt know you could restore condition like that

[Tsubame ⭐]

Originally posted by Slave Knight Dong:

Originally posted by Vimpster:

Are you by any chance replacing your vehicles when they get old? Because you are not meant to be doing that. There is a maintenance slider that you can increase to improve a vehicles condition back to brand new. It is much cheaper than buying a new vehicle everytime they get old. And for cargo lines it isn't even important if the vehicle is in bad condition as the only downside to bad condition vehicles is that they emit more emissions which only affects residential buildings in towns.

Yeah ive been replacing them lol, i didnt know you could restore condition like that

That is the problem. Just increase maintenance and you will be ok.

Even with default maintenance vehicles still do the job, they only look ugly and as stated emit more emissions.

The emissions have a negative, but small to be almost marginal, effect on city growth. If you are not ok with that anyway you can use the No Emissions mod.

[Tarazed]

Another thing that can help is to increase the train's utilisation. As your trains (should be) full one way, but empty on the return journey, you're paying maintenance both ways but only earning on one of them.

If you have other nearby industries that you can extend your network (even with a truck line) so that your trains will have something to transport in both directions, it massively increases the profitability margin.

For example, see if you have a Steel Mill not too far away from your Stone Quarry and a Coal or Iron Mine near your Construction Material Factory. With this, you either run the Stone train to visit them, or put in truck lines at both ends to get them to your existing train stations, so the train will carry Stone one way and Coal or Iron back the other way. Even if your trucks don't deliver enough to fill the train on the return journey, whatever you do deliver is just free money.

Going forward, looking for these opportunities to carry both ways is part of the skill of selecting a good route. This is especially important for the first few routes you build on the map. Once you've got a few lines like this, money should be flowing in so you can start carrying a few less efficient routes.