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In 1850 you're probably best off settling for relatively short cargo runs using horse-drawn carriages. And ships, if you're lucky enough that the right industries spawn near your river.
Be mindful of hilly terrain! In this era, just about any loaded vehicle slows to an absolute crawl for even moderate inclines, killing your profit margin.
I would wait until about the 1880s until I would attempt some serious expansion. Also, it's with the steam tram you can hope to provide decent city passenger service. As a beginner, I would not try to provide rail passenger service before you can offer decent bus commuter routes, and you can't really do that with horse buggies if the town is sizable or has any sort of incline.
The 1850 period is difficult if you set the goal of turning enough profit to amass enough cash to expand (build decent rail cargo lines, and so on). What you need out of the 1850s and 1860s is many smaller horse-drawn cargo routes that give enough cash to afford starting running trains, so you don't have to wait until the 1900s before you can afford expanding (which would essentially waste the 19th century entirely).
If you haven't tried it, one suggestion is to first try starting in 1900. Then start in 1880. Only when you feel you have a handle on things go for the full 1850 experience.
Or, of course, play on easy mode... ;-)
What I do is set up a moderate passenger train route between two cities of at least moderate size. If the cities are too small, it won't work. As part of the setup, each city gets two circular tram services that get passengers around the city, but more importantly, gets them to the train. The trams generally don't make a profit - but the train does. Quite a large one after a few years. When I have the funds, I add a 3rd city. This one doesn't have to be big, but it does add to the destinations your passengers can get to, which increases the passengers. By that stage you should have 3-4 trains, each with 1/2 dozen coaches (less coaches if you play using the USA or Asian sets).
My advice is start in 1900. In 1900 you get the first truck, so you don't have to put up with horse and carts for truck deliveries....
This.
The game flows like real history, with each era dominated by certain modes of transport.
A waterless start in 1850 just feels awkward to me.
While you have less cash, vehicles are cheaper as well, and the slower speeds of the trains makes shorter or more meandering routes a little more forgiving.
For a train in a similar setup, crude oil, refined oil and fuel are also a good one to look for in trains as the cars carry all the products. This can be a good setup if you can find the right city and factory arrangement.
The other thing I do is try to pay off dept. If you have 5M in debt, the interest will be eating into everything you do as the profit margins are so small, so pay it off as soon as you can. I usually try to be debt free by 1890, but there is one other thing to manage; upgrades. Sometimes it is worth going further in dept to upgrade your trains, which will end up bringing in more income allowing you to pay it off faster. Once you climb out of the debt hole, income starts pouring in and expansion starts happening faster and faster.
The big issues with an 1850 start that is not focused on water are:
1. Passenger routes which can be very profitable later are not in 1850 since not enough people reside on the map and those that do have less reason to travel (no shops and jobs yet basically).
2. Trains are painfully slow and can haul only minuscule loads. Although it is not impossible to make a profitable train line before 1875-ish when you start to see slightly better locos you've got to be pretty accurate about it.
For these reasons an 1850 start is best made using horse and cart to transport cargo where there is close proximity of an industry chain and a town consuming the end product. On most maps there are usually opportunities to connect food and brick deliveries quite easily. These will then finance fuel and tool two-step chains. Expect 1-2m per year earnings from this.
These deliveries will significantly accelerate the growth of supplied towns and connecting these towns with stage coaches will accelerate growth further (although they won't make much if any money). Which of course increased the towns' demand for goods so it is at this point were train lines become not just possible but probably necessary to meet increased demand.
I would say saving up your horse and cart profits until you get access to a decent 50kph+ loco is a pretty safe strategy. In my current game I didn't replace my horse and cart set up at this stage, I invested 20m setting up an expanded planks operation and a steel mill to open up a machine factory to provide more high value goods to increase growth in my towns followed by passenger rail connections to increase growth further. This took me from ~2m a year to ~8m a year quite quickly.
On a map with a lot of rivers or especially an island map then ships are totally viable from the get go, same as the 20th century basically.
2. Start with one simple cargo line, preferrably fuel as it requires only one type of wagon. Avoid goods and machines, you can't afford all the vehicles needed to make them operating.
3. Do not run passenger trains until your first industry becomes profitable.
4. If you can, use ships. They're much slower, but they're much cheaper and have a capacity of a long train for quarter the cost. Do not attempt to use carriages outside of towns.
5. Make your first routes short, lest the operating costs will eat your initial loan and you won't be able to make adjustments if needed.
6. Unless the terrain in the town is very rough or you need a very small line to a highly specific point in the city, use trams rather than carriages.
This works because the train will be full of oil going one way and full of fuel going the other which is insanely profitable even for 1850 trains. If you get lucky with this situation consider borrowing up to the max to set it up, it will repay itself hand over fist.
A more risky (i.e. less profitable) version of this is where the oil well is near to the fuel refinery where, because of the 2:1 ratio between crude and oil, your train will be shipping full loads of crude but only half loads of oil.
Similar to that is where you have a town demanding tools next to either a sawmill or a tools factory. In this case you will have full loads of logs going one way and half loads of planks the other (you want a forest near the tools factory to run logs up to the sawmill, not near the sawmill).
These early train lines would probably cost you 6-8m all in to set up (you will need to lay good flat straight tracks to make 1850 locos work out) and it will take some time for everything to bed in and wind up during which time you will be paying maintenance through the nose every month while your trains crawl across the map. Since 10m is your max loan this can easily become a squeaky bum situation.
That's why the full load/half load options are a bit risky. The full load both ways one is pretty much a banker though if you're lucky enough to roll it.
Although there is a 2-1 radio for food, it's still a good start, and a single farm can supply a single town early in the game. On medium difficulty, you can make a profitable route very easily, so I will always borrow the max (over time) to build as many profitable routes as possible.
Cheers,
Chris.