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Mid to late game vehicles are expensive to buy and run. It's a lot harder to build up a profitable empire from nothing in the later years. Starting at 1850 it's still easy to overbuild at the start and run into debt, but it's also a lot easier to get a profitable start too.
When I have a couple to three million to spare, I buy another train to ship fuel to another, but farther away, town. From there is just gets easier.
I never did what you did tho, starting with a passenger line. Maybe try another industry, like fuel. That never set me back.
First there are lots of ways to start a map that will work just fine. The formula I tend to use is like this: look for a farm that is close at least 1 city and pretty close to another. Find the food plant that is a ways away. Setup rail with boxcars only to run between farm-food. Setup truck line to first city. Setup trams in both cities. Setup bus line to connect cities. Maybe connect by bus to other nearby cities.
Let run to get farm going and upgrade at least once. Then add truck line to bring food to second city. Let farm-food grow, add another train to get frequency to a good place. Let grow more. Focus on city closest to farm to expand (more bus connections to other cities).
Give this setup a few years tweaking here and there, and there will be plenty of profit to expand however you like.
Instead of farm you can use oil-fuel. The other chains can be a little costly to get running at the start. And the const-material doesn't supply well in both directions by rail, will work for trucks though.
An optimal setup has your vehicles running as full for as much of their journey as possible. When it comes to Farms and Trains, I would skip Grain/Gondolas completely and just go with Boxcars instead. Farms can produce Grain OR Livestock, and Food Processors can accept Grain OR Livestock, but there is no reason you have to provide transportation for both goods. Farms will produce whatever you can transport, so if you can only transport Livestock, they will only produce Livestock. The reason you want to do this is that your most profitable line will be one that transports Livestock in one direction, and then Food back the other direction, since Livestock converts into Food in a 1:1 ratio.
With your Food line you either drop off the the Food at the Farm and then run the food onwards to a town on a second line, or send the train onwards to a town near the farm to deliver to, and then return the train empty back to the farm. In such a situation you want to pick a Farm that is close to the town that you will be supplying with Food to minimize how much the train runs empty.
The same can be done with Crude Oil/Fuel. Setup the same line as above, except Oil Well near a town you want to deliver Fuel to so that you can run Oil trains fuel in both directions.
Construction Materials is more complicated to do by train since you need both Gondolas and Stake Cars, so either run ConMat by trucks, or combine it with the Steel Industry.
If you can find a situation where you have a Steel Mill in one area, a Construction Materials Plant at another area, you can run a Gondola line from the Steel Mill to the Construction Materials plant with a bonus if there is also a Stone Quarry near the Steel Mill and Iron Ore Mine (or Coal Mine) near the Construction Materials Plant. In such a case, you run Slag/Stone going one direction, and Iron Ore/Coal going the other direction for maximum potential profit.
When it comes to the Steel/ConMat side of things, you ideally want a Goods Factory or Machine Factory near the Construction Materials Plant, and a town near the Steel Mill. In this case, your Steel/ConMat train can haul Steel to the Machine Factory or Goods Factory, take a short trip empty over to the ConMat Plant to pick up ConMat, and then deliver ConMat back the other direction towards the Steel Mill when you can supply a town with ConMat.
I did both of the two above setups in my Train Fever Industrialist series on Youtube, and I found a lengthy Steel in one direction/ConMat in the other direction line in my European Freeplay series. I can sort of do the same for a Gondola line but it's a bit more lengthy to get the Iron Ore the Steel MIll needs.
Whatever you do, don't ignore trucks. Trucks can be incredibly profitable AND they are very versatilie. With a few exceptions they can carry any type of cargo and so as long as you can setup a situation where goods flow in one direction, and other goods flow back the other direction, they will provide that cargo capacity. Trucks have always been the financial backbone of my operations, allowing me to otherwise finance expensive rail lines.
Dude you don't have to borrow any money. As all of us have mentioned, your best strategy is to find that one really good industry to start off with.
Sbgaming is likely far better at strategy than me; I'm still running empty trains back to their supply depots! But as I mentioned, I always pick fuel as my first line connected to a truck depot connected to a local town. Done. From there I just watch my finances - once I get to about 3 million, I buy another train to ship more fuel.
And as Sbgaming suggested, don't under estimate trucks. I'll set up a depot right next to a train drop-off, and run trucks to any close towns. From there it's just a matter of restructuring roads to better manage traffic. I also found it useful, probably to a lesser extent, to help towns build their roads. Sometimes the AI is weird, dropping roadways like spaghetti.
People are right though, you can make a decently profitable line without needing much of a loan to get started. The important thing is you absolutely have to be sure you have profitable lines running before you run out of money, because if you've maxed the loan and your balance goes into the negative, you can't build or buy anything.
And if you do use loan money, try and get it paid back as quick as you can. It costs interest at the end of every year.
The simple cargo lines, like food or fuel, are pretty good ways of bringing in money quickly. Also both can bring resource to the factory and deliver the product to towns using just 1 train with the same wagons (crude oil and fuel are both moved in tank wagons, cattle and food are both moved in box wagons). Note that I don't usually go with fuel first, because the refinery will use some of your initial crude oil deliveries to produce refined oil which you wont be able to use so early on. The food factory on the other hand only makes food.
Passenger numbers take longer to build up than cargo does, so aren't ideal for your first line. Ideally you want something profitable to already be running first to support the cost of starting a passenger route.
In my Truck Fever series (Hard Mode with all Hard Mode Achievements) I didn't take a single loan starting in 1850. Reach Year 2000 without taking any loans for the Penny Pincher Achievement. The key is to find a few profitable cargo lines (cargo has a x2 price multiplier, which is how you can make significant profits allowing you to expand). The reason for the x2 multiplier is because it's assumed cargo travels in one direction (Farm to Food Processing Plant to Town), but we as players can take advantage of that by setting up our lines so cargo travels in a way that we maximize how often our trucks stay full.
My first three lines in the series were running Food from a Farm on one side of Salinas, delivering past Salinas to a Food Processing Plant and having the Trucks return and drop off food along the way. The second line was an Oil Line that went from an Oil Well near Buffalo down to a Refinery near Tampa, and then instead of dropping off the Fuel in Tampa like a lot of people might do, send the Fuel back to Buffalo instead. From there, I setup a line that went between Salinas and Buffalo which allowed me to send Food to Buffalo and Fuel back to Salinas. Profit in both directions. The third line was a ConMat line that went from a Quarry to a ConMat Plant and then back to the Quarry with a short transfer line to supply back to Salinas, which then could travel onwards to Buffalo. By 1870-80 or so I completely paid off the initial $1.2M starting loan, and from there it was pure profit.
In my current European series (medium difficulty) one of my profitable lines is running Oil by ship to a Refinery, returning Fuel (and Refined Oil for a Chemical Plant) back to the Oil Well to supply the nearby town, as well as a large network of connected towns. I've max'd out the $10M loan multiple times throughout the first 50 years, but I have focused on creating profitable routes where possible. It's made more challenging by the fact that I generated the map without the initial roads, so if I want to connect up towns to run cargo or passengers, it's several hundred thousand upfront just for a road. The map also was generated with settings that make ships a viable option for both passenger and cargo.
By 1900 I'm running an Income of $39.7M on $18.5M of running costs. My Roads account for $13.1M in Income, Rail is $13.4M, and Water is $13.1M. Running costs are $5.16M for roads, $7.81M for Rail, and $5.51M for Water. This is on Medium difficulty with the 4x slower mod. While time ticks by 4 times slower, and so vehicles can travel 4 times the distance (and make 4 times the trips) that they otherwise would, you get paid 1/4 what you normally would, which balances out, but the biggest difference is that even the majority of my local passenger bus lines are profitable.
The first thing I did when I hit 1900 was go upwards of $18.5M in debt, mostly on upgrading my Oil Tanker Fleet to the larger capacity Vandal. I had paid that all off by the end of the year, with an extra $2.36M in the bank.
Trains are an expensive investment (both upfront in their cost, plus the cost of stations and track, but also running costs), and are their most profitable when they travel long distances. Trucks (even 1850's Horse Wagons) can easily handle distances and be profitable upwards of the distance between two towns. If you think a distance is too long for trucks, it probably isn't. Their low running costs generally means you can kick start some industries with an initial truck line even if you eventually plan to replace it with a rail line later.
I more or less did that with my Mainline Freight. I had three towns (West Malling, Upton and Grays which were transfering a load of cargo between them on two connecting Road Freight Lines, including a Farm sending Livestock one direction, and a second Farm sending Livestock back the other direction, each trying to supply two separate Food Processing Plants.
In addition, I had both Food Processing Plants sending Food along this same route. It was hillarious to see one truck drop off Food or Livestock in West Malling, only to pick up Food or Livestock to ship it back the other direction. I setup a rail line with boxcars between the three towns, and not only did the industries keep sending cargo by the road line, they also sent cargo by rail, and it's all I can do to keep up with what is showing up to be delivered.
Frequency matters. You're better off with 3 trains with 2 wagons on each than a single train with 6 wagons. The more frequent your vehicles show up, the more willing industries are to produce and supply you with goods. Once an industry has upgraded once or twice, you can then ramp up capacity on each train when even more goods start to show up.
- When starting a new map, pause and take time to properly survey the map. Look for supply chain that isn't too long where you can hopefully move product in both directions to maximize profit. One method is find raw resource (farm, stone, oil well) on one side of a town and the processing center (food processing, construction material, oil refinery) on the other side of the town. This way you can cart the raw resource one way, then the finished product on the return trip and drop it in town.
*Note: Take into account elevation changes as this will effect building costs and speed of vehicles.
- When starting a supply chain, look to the future. You may start by supplying one town, but the hope is the industries will upgrade and you can then supply multiple towns. So it's a good idea to start with a supply chain that is close enough to supply two or more towns. As the industry upgrades, you can add new lines to supply additional towns.
- It's ok to borrow, but don't max out. Here's why: (a) You need to keep money available when setting up expensive new lines, (b) Vehicle replacements, and (c) The loan interest will hurt your profits.
Typically when I borrow, it's after I've established profitable lines and know that I'll be able to pay it down in a timely manner.
- Don't panic if you aren't making huge profits early. If starting in 1850, the vehicles are slow and loads small, so amount you make won't be huge. It builds over time. I think with each game there comes a tipping point where you have enough profitable lines and the right vehicles become available to ship enough product to really make good profits.
- Prior to setting up passenger train line, typically I'll set up bus between cities. I do this for a couple reasons: (a) Typically it should make a little (and I do mean little) profit, and (b) I believe it prepares things for when I do setup passenger train service. After passenger train is setup, I leave bus in place for those who prefer slow and cheap travel.