Hauling the same cargo from A to C with a stop in B

[Cash on Wheels]

Cash on Wheels, I fail to see what you are saying with your comments after what has been said in the rest of this thread. At the risk of repeating much of it, the RT3 game doesn't understand mid-route stops it only puts passengers on a train on a direct route between two cities (A->B). Any further haul is a "separate" journey according to the game no matter how many stops are on a train's route and whether those stops form part of a particular routing pattern. There is passenger traffic over the longer distances, but the ........

No stops?
(This example passenger-only train runs to stations A-B-C-B-A)

So lets say 2.8 passengers board a train at station A. All 2.8 are bound for station C. The train has a stop at station B, but B is a ghost town with no buildings or any houses near by. So in theory the train should stop at B 'unload' the 2.8 passengers. Then 'reload' all or most of them. (Just like freight would) Then Continue to C.

I tested this on a blank 3 city map. Got mixed results. Region00 was also empty.

This is all good fun.....

[Cash on Wheels]

Lore around here is Passengers from A destin to C. Can only travel directly from A to C. They cannot travel A to B then to C.

Well explain this then:

In riga's lavita map I had two mainlines meet in the middle of nowhere. So I plopped down a classification yard. Something strange started to happpen. My yardmaster decided to send loads of passengers over the hump?! Bear in mind there is only one house within the stations radius. So why so much inbound & outbound passenger traffic?

[RulerofRails]

Ah, yes, this is expected behavior. Passengers are stopping over in the "hump yard" on their travel between the two cities. But the game is determining when the passengers are ready to travel for the second leg of the journey (or B-C). This determination is somewhat random and tends to build-up over time, in contrast to what would be "expected" behavior of a journey between two major destinations with a stop-over where most travelers stayed on the train (as in real life). As I said earlier, there's no definite way to know if stop-over cargo is "the same" due to no player access to cargo ID info. It appears to be, but it's still very unlikely that one would buy a train A-B-C and see a consistent express load A-B then B-C immediately (I understood the question as being how to do this).

In theory it's possible to balance and concentrate your express movements (use Freight only/Express only switches) so that you have a train running A-B-C with a fairly consistent car count on a well-established system. However, the tricky part with splitting a journey (A-C into A-B-C) is that if there are other connections to town "B" this adds unwanted variables (a varying portion of traffic may be diverted). You can still design such a system, but there is some logic (at least it's the basis behind what I did) behind it that while relatively simple has some rules that must be followed (such as split traffic, concentrate express, no leaks where you put a haul-anything train). Concentrating express traffic may allow more of it to travel on a train with a higher Pax appeal, also more of it may travel on a train with a Diner. There is a density threshold, below which the effort wont be rewarded much, but when used correctly there is some revenue for the taking, in the mid- to long-term scheme of things.