How do I earn more money for one ride from A to B?

[That Emoji]

After 50 hours I still don't understand how do I earn more money, all the time I earn like 10k or 20k GBP for one ride from A to B. And even when I make my trains smaller so the loading times are faster they earn less money (duh) but when I make them bigger they just earn like 5-10k GBP more so I don't understand how do all youtubers make like 50k GBP for one ride with same size trains. Please explain.

[noctilucus]

There's a graph in the game itself that explains how much you are paid for each cargo per unit of distance, and how that amount decreases with slower delivery.

So picking highly paid goods and delivering them fast is the way to go. From the top of my head, coal pays quite well and typically you're able to find coal mines that pump out a good amount of coal each month (120 tons or more)
Also, the longer the distance, the more you're paid so if their routes are 3x longer than yours, they'll roughly get 3x the income per trip (but it will also take 3 times longer to make that trip)

Trains do become a lot faster over time which allows to rake in much bigger amounts. Although once you get access to medium to high capacity aircraft, those are really the money makers.

And once banks are being built, you can transport valuables which pays a lot more than coal or any other good in the game.

[That Emoji]

Originally posted by noctilucus:

There's a graph in the game itself that explains how much you are paid for each cargo per unit of distance, and how that amount decreases with slower delivery.

So picking highly paid goods and delivering them fast is the way to go. From the top of my head, coal pays quite well and typically you're able to find coal mines that pump out a good amount of coal each month (120 tons or more)
Also, the longer the distance, the more you're paid so if their routes are 3x longer than yours, they'll roughly get 3x the income per trip (but it will also take 3 times longer to make that trip)

Trains do become a lot faster over time which allows to rake in much bigger amounts. Although once you get access to medium to high capacity aircraft, those are really the money makers.

And once banks are being built, you can transport valuables which pays a lot more than coal or any other good in the game.

Ah, I get it now. Just tested it out, and yeah now the trains earn lots of money, and also I guess loading times don't count for how much time it takes for train to make a ride from A to B? Am I right

[omnius]

It takes some testing of each route I build to find the sweet spot between using one or more trains on a particular route, Longer trains carry more stuff and can be more cost efficient but if the resource declines in production you can end up with empty cars. Distance is great for items that aren't time sensitive like passengers, mail or livestock and grain.

[noctilucus]

Originally posted by That Emoji:

Ah, I get it now. Just tested it out, and yeah now the trains earn lots of money, and also I guess loading times don't count for how much time it takes for train to make a ride from A to B? Am I right

Great!

If I remember correctly, loading time does count for the travel time. So for very time-sensitive goods, it doesn't make sense to have the train wait long to get a full load; whereas for goods like coal, it's worth loading a bit longer to get a full load (even more so because with coal you get an empty return trip, which is different from passengers / mail / ...)

That would also explain why longer routes can be very profitable, because the loading time and acceleration time become shorter relative to the overall route.

Maybe a last, unrelated tip: for routes where I would expect a full load or for time-sensitive goods, I would always choose the fastest train. But especially in the beginning when cash is limited, for smaller loads, shorter trips,... of less time-sensitive cargo, the much lower maintenance cost of the 2nd or 3rd fastest train may offset the lower income due to its lower speed.
Of course: 10% lower speed counts double: you get paid less for the same trip because the goods took longer to arrive and in a year, you'll transport up to 10% less goods.
But you'll quickly get a feel for it once you have a few trains running and look at their annual profitability.