Crossing the Alps

[Hawk]

The following text is a compilation of what was salvaged from the old Gathering Forum. It contains postings from several different people.
Thanks goes out to Wolverine for putting this all together.

Hawk

Crossing the Alps
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I just finished the ALPS scenario and had a perfert tunnel between Innsbruck, Austria & Bolzano, Italy. The tunnel was 22 grids long and cost 1.2 million but it was worth every penny.
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I've failed dismally at this scenario, there just doesn't seem to be a way to build up income quickly in the early stages with big distances between cities and limited resource demand/supply.
Hints and tips are welcome...
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Hauling weapons from Venice will usually be quite profitable, so cross the alps by following the stream of weapons. Also connect all major italian cities.
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Playing on normal, I started by connecting all Italian cities and buying up/placing whatever industry I could that would be profitable. About 2/3 of the way to the deadline I tunneled through the alps on the west side to the tune of about 2Mil (I later upgraded to double track for an insane amount of money). Once I was on the other side and could haul weapons I was making back the bonds I had taken out easily..each train was worth over 1Mil and I had four of them running!
Fun map.
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I did the exact same thing El Tea!
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Sounds like the recipe for success
Count me as another one for hooking up all of Italy first. The Weapons seemed to collect at Verona, which was handy; connected the towns upriver to Bolanzo and blasted my way through.
Hauling those weapons nets some nice payoff, taking the sting out of the cost of the tunnel.
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Hunh. I didn't get offered a tunnel. Didn't try just one big span, and I had tunnels set to "normal". I laid a route bit by bit over the mountains trying to keep the grade half-reasonable. I couldn't find any way down from the cliff over Innsbruck so I del'ed out the track and went to the next city east - Rosenfield or something. Then I plopped stations at either end of the killer crossing and ran a mountain king engine over it (what are those things supposed to be anyway - cable cars?) Worked like a charm. Loved watching cargo go back and forth.
Oh, I started by connecting up Italy. Started in Venice, worked east and west until I reached Milan and Trent, then had plenty of money.
Has anyone built the Milan-Zurich connection? The scenario reads like they expect you to do that first. It would start up the steel industry and give you a *lot* of weapons to ship.
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If you don't own territory rights through the area you're crossing then the tunnel won't appear. I had that problem 3 times and kept kicking myself every time.
You might also need to set tunnel frequency to "common".
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I think that's it. I was already building through the Alps when I hit the boundary and had to buy rights. The boundary's near the top so I probably didn't have any purpose to a tunnel way up there.
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The most difficult part I though was getting the track and station layout in Verona just right, so that my station covered the entire city but there was enough room to get good track layouts for trains from Venice AND Milan going over the Alps. Also, in my first attempt I had a Dairy covering the entire riverbed, which I discovered too late - I had to reload the scneario. The Dairy had totally deformed the geography making it impossible to get past that spot in any finacially viable way...
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I thrashed this one my first time out (Medium), finishing it by 1891 - 19 years to spare!
I started in Venice-Trieste area and worked my way west. Or Left. Or whatever - it wasn't until I started working on the Alps did I bother with a true N-S orientation. I issued stock as often as possible, keeping my price below $100 as long as I could. I was able to connect with Milan about 3-4 years in, and spent a year or two strengthening my network by adding water/service and a couple of hotels/PO/taverns/rest. I then made my way north through the alps twice - first time a quick jaunt to the city N-NW of Venice (but not on the Innsbruck route), and then the second push north started the Innsbruck route proper. I climbed up to Bolzano and made the million dollar tunnel through to Innsbruck by 1880, '81. From there it was nothing but add four trains (2 from Innsbruck, 2 from Venice) and start hauling weapons from V to I. I then extended a double track to Munich, started another six trains (2 to pick up Innsbruck weapons, 4 making the Venice-Munich run). While the trains were running I then connected to Salzburg (Mozarts home town) and then made my way west (or left) to Zurich. January 1891, I got the gold right after the autosave - I actually made a copy of the savegame file so I don't lose it when I start a new scenario. All my bonds were paid off, btw.
Again I avoided industry until the end, just to have something to do with the excess cash. Almost every city also got a large station from the beginning, btw, because there weren't too many cities and the ones provided were rather dispersed.
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As a point of pedantry, there is a historical flaw with the map. At the time of the scenario Trieste was a free port and a separate Crown Land under the rule of the Austro-Hungary Empire - not part of Italy. Also Slovenia and Croatia were part of the Austro-Hungary Empire and not independent entities...
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I did build a 2-parts tunnel, getting to the Austrian Easternmost city(Klagenfurt, I think), anf then to Rosenheim. Little tricky, but as efficient as a full tunnel.
Of course, that is after 20 years of Italian exploitation.
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I can give you an example on how not to build the tunnel.
Never save while playing!
Do the Bolzano-Innsbruck tunnel thing, after that bend the track along the river and build the station on the hilly side of the track. Find out you cannot split the rail anywhare after the tunnel, and that the station has flattened the ground so that the rail can not continue one the other side of the station.
Try reversing by removing the track, do it one step to much and remove the tunnel.
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That's the sort of thing that makes you pine for a global "undo" button.
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I seem to have a problem getting recognised that I have just about connected everything in the Alps Scenario and also hauled the double amount of weapons to Munich than required.
The obvious strategy for this scenario is first to bulid a railroad south of the Alps and when this one is up and running then resign and start a new RR north of the Alps, generate enough cash to buy the southern RR back again, and then soon you'll have enough dough to connect through the Alps, and easily haul the required 30 loads of weapons to Munich. However in the annual report you are never being credited for connecting the cities. I am 10 years before the time limit, I've got 25 mill in cash, I have made any possible connection through the Alps, drilling tunnels just about everywhere, bridging just about any mountaintop on screen. I have bulldozed all the original stations, as the originally was build by separete RR and rebuild them, and nothing has helped. This is hugely frustrating and is making a darn good game into a pretty lousy one.
Has anybody experienced the same and can advise of what to do
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I wonder if this is related to a problem that came up in some other scenarios. One player reported he could not get his St. Louis connection acknowledged in Germantown if an AI connected it first. No matter if he built his own station. I had the same trouble with Vienna, connected first by AI in Orient Express. It seems in your case and in the two I mentioned, a connection only registers once, with the company that first made it. What to do? I just make sure the important cities get my stations early in the game. But it looks like a bug imho.
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I think I have had similar experiences. Make sure if you build a second station at a connect goal city that it is renamed to the town name from "name" Junction.
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Hi
I had no problem with this scenario Matter of fact this was the only scenario where I got the gold. I stayed with one company. No trouble at all. Maybe being an austrian helped knowing where to put the tracks
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I think you're being too complicated. I just kept on building track from one city to the other as money came available and had no difficulty getting gold first attempt.
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Problem might be that the game still sees it as being 2 separate companies (or lines).
i don't know but maybe what the game is looking for is one single company to make the connection.
Not exactly reality i know, but it could be the cause of your dilemma.
See if you can just run one line (steep as you like) across the alps with a station the other end for the connection, no need to run any trains the connect should be enough.
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I have tried twice to start the crossing the Alps and in both on easy I loose money. Whassssup?
Any hints, I tried a search and could not find any threads on this topic so sorry if its a dup.
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watch weapons walk
Find them and help them along their way.
I always start in Italy then expand towards Munich. I connect to Zurich last of all.
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First off, do not lay any track that you are not going to use, it costs you maintenance. If you cannot reach a city due to lack of funds, wait til the funds arrive then lay the track and create the train route.
I set up an economic base in the Milan-Vienna(Venice ??) plains, before heading up the valley to tunnel through the Alps. I mostly use train routes, and not industries at the start.
Then I build my railroad in stages, as funds were always an issue until later in the scenario. I had to wait in the Alps, at the city that starts with a 'B', to accumulate tunnel funds. During the waiting time I could:
- review my track
- take train rides
- review the cargo overlay for potential industry windfalls (eg a city being supplied by 4 local produce farms and the having a distillery )
Also I used Bonds when necessary, check you Credit Rating periodically.
My company, The Flying Pig, is a fairly new in this business, so the above worked on easy.
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Weapons is the real key. You can make $2000k on a run of weapons from Venice to Berlin... and they supply/demand that amount every year!
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If Gadget has crossed the Alps, shipping weapons from Vienna -> Berlin, definitely is the answer.
Can you offer any advice when still on the Italian side if the Alps?
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Bring the weapons as far as you can while still on the Italian side.. thats one solid source of income. There is a little village partly up the river too that is still in Italy that you can bring the weapons to.
That should be a profitable run. You can also run to some of the cities around Venice. Those runs should fund your expansion across Italy. Be sure to connect to as many cities as you can (and there isn't many, maybe 6) to generate as much rail traffic as you can.
If you do that, you should have no problem generating the revenue or credit rating to fund a trip across (~$4000k to get to Berlin likely). Once you've crossed, then you have pretty much won.
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I haul weapons to Verona with a train that is good on the flats. They switch to shorter lighter trains at Verona and go to Bolzano. Then I connect all cities on the Italian side. Altogether, there is good income. Shays from Bolzano out of the Alps. Consolidations for the last leg to Munich. Burn track to Zurich.
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I never discovered the Berlin - Venice weapons run but following is from my (unpublished) guide to getting gold on Hard setting:
Campaign Eight: Crossing The Alps Connect Venice, Milan, Munich & Zurich and haul 30 loads of weapons to Munich in 35 years
Another easy one. On Hard I won 13 years early after spending the last five years sitting around waiting for the weapons to be hauled. I connected in the order listed because the line Venice-Verona-Milan brings in oodles of the readies and then went up to Trento, Bolzano and Innsbruck – the latter section needing over $2m to lay the tunnel and have enough left for a station and trains. This is the only bit needing really careful track laying and you may have dig the tunnel several times to ensure that from where it finishes in Innsbruck you can turn east along the river to reach Munich. I took a bond initially and another two at this point. Once I hit Munich I let the money roll in, double tracked Milan-Venice, repaid bonds and set off for Zurich – it only took 3 years or so. If I’d thought to put on two trains just hauling weapons at this point I could probably have won another two years early. As it was I was double tracked from Munich all the way south, paying $1m dividends, buying back stock and increasing my PNW just to fill in the time whilst the weapons were moving!
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Thanks guys. My third try last night and I got gold on easy setting. I connected all the cities on the Italy side before I tried to cross the Alps. I only connected cities and had no spurs to farms or mines or cattle ranchs. That kills your income in this senario.
I started with the weapons run from the docks on the bottom right of the map and went to the middle town. I found this buy looking for how the weapons flowed.
I used a few bonds to help get this finish hooking up all the cities on the Italian side. I then waited and let my credit rating build. While I was waiting I maximized my number of trains that could fit on the single tracks I had. I double tracked in one spot.
Once my credit rating was up to AAA, I took out $6000000 in bonds and ran a track/tunnels up the right side of the map were it looks flattest. I ran this track all the way to the other side of map. Used shays and the $120k train to move goods. The money was rolling in then and Iconnected all the cities up to Munich as soon as possible. I topped out my bonds to get this done asap. Then I got specific trains hauling weapons from one side of the map to the other. I also put a train at the city just before munich picking up weapons as some still went by horse cart through the mountains, so I captured these few extra loads.
I got gold with about 7 years to go.
Thanks For the Pointers
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I just finished this today on hard (my 8th map) and had gold 9/84, with the help of an AI company and on 12/85 without the AI's help, with 25 years to go. I must be trying too harddddddddddddd.
For the 9/84 win, the AI I created delivered weapons from my Berlin station to his Berlin station. For the later win, I needed more time to make legitimate deliveries only. I had plans for the AI but the scenario was over too soon.
Too bad the gold trigger was "weapons to territory" when "weapons to territory by company" is sitting right there. I guess we can't defend against multiple deliveries of the same cargo in RT3, nor against deliveries from Berlin to Berlin. I hope player-made maps are put together a little tighter. I also noticed you can create multiple AI companies all at once, no 2 year wait like in RT2.
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wrote:
I set up an economic base in the Milan-Vienna(Venice ??) plains, before heading up the valley to tunnel through the Alps. I mostly use train routes, and not industries at the start.
Then I build my railroad in stages, as funds were always an issue until later in the scenario. I had to wait in the Alps, to accumulate tunnel funds.
I agree with this approach.
I even made it crossing the Alps in the west. When you have things working on the Italian plains (I found it safe to connect cities and invest in fruit and grain) you can connect to a small town with an "S" and then to Chur. It's only one moutainchain to Zurich then. By the time you've reached the German side of the Alps you should connect Munich asap and start running cheap but strong Shay trains with 4 or 5 loads of weapons from Venice and Verona (they climb anything). This way, you don't even need access to Austria.
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I like to develope the lumber chain in the east of Italy. Starting a second company with shays and stations near the camps is also not a bad option either.

[RayofSunshine]

I kept reading all the threads of comments and suggestions on this Crossing the Alps, and finally at the end, it dawned on my that a goodly number of the comments were that of AIs. Hence we must have a dupe type of named scenario.

First as I read the comments, I tried to visualize the scenario of which I was playing which is the ""Crossing the Alps"" CAMPAIGN. Comments were similar to some of the problems which I was having, basically, trying to get a feasible route from Venice to Munich for the weapons. I kept running inot "sheer" mountain sides, as I was trying to get ""over"" the mountains, following rivers or passages. To try an find a way, I cheated with ""bailout""funding to link the 2 cities. Eventually with some "high" bridges but very little "tunnels" I managed to get an eastern routing, but only 1/2 way thru the mountains, at a considerable amount of financing. Maybe $40M. But that was after maybe 6 other attempted routes. Then I took the suggestion from a player, to just build a "tunnel", which was considerably less expensive at $2.5M, and after I reloaded, so as to erase the "cheat" financing.

But another player asked a question pertaining to a route Milan to Zurich, as he believed that "as it was the 1st requirement" which was for BZ, should be the initial goal. Well again, I called upon the ""cheat bailout" and tried routes. It took some time, but found that it was possibe at a cost of $6-7M, depending on the exact routing of the 'entry and exit" of the tunnels. If interested, laid track ""parrell to Adda Rvr" from Milan to just short of the Italy Border. Then bear right with a "tunnel" to the Adda Rvr. Turning NORTH, lay track along river and a "tunnel" to Chur. A player will have to determine exactly the location of their depot in the "flats". Then bearing "left" just short of the Austrian Border, build another "tunnel" to its exit, and lay tracks thereafter to Zurich.
Some what costly, but has to be compared to laying track from Munich to Zurich.

OH. CROSSING THE ALPS CAMPAIGN does not have any AIs, for the reason I question the differences in the comments being made in previous threads.

As to the ""OTHER"" Crossing the Alps, or would be titled somewhat differently, and I will have to check against the actual titles, I don't believe I had a problem crossing the Alps, but believe the commodity in demand was "clothing or its raw materials. So this gives me some confusion, and I have played both scenarios. Again, I will have to check the Archives.

[RayofSunshine]

Well, I don't have a clue of the ""title"" of which there is a similarity of the terrain of Italy is being used. However, it is possible that the scenario of which I have mentioned to haul "clothing or its raw materials" over the Alps might be that of the RT2 Edition.

Anyway, where I may have missed the "point" on the mention of AIs, I thought that due to the player "starting" another railway, could have some bearing on the statement.

Now to my playing this RT3 "Crossing the Alps", I do not remember how it was done in my 1st attempt years ago. Again, it could now be my more experience with the system. The reason I make such a comment? I completed the goal requirements in the Hard level by Mar.1891, with no industry purchases, and didn't connect to Sandrio for its $100k. It would be a waste of revenue to navigate into its surrounding mountains.

What I did find in the difference for the 30 required to be hauled to ""Munich"", was that I misdirected a consist of 8 weapons to a Steel Mill, which was in the vicinity of Munich, and did get credit for the haul.

These Campaign scenarios are interesting to play with some good concepts. Maybe too easy to accomplish the goals and medals, but still fun to play. I hope more players will take the advantage of them, and especially for the newbes and for the 'first timers. !

[undertoad]

This campaign is like a lesson in how to deal with barriers (rivers, mountains, territory boundaries).

It's pretty tough to get going at the start. You only have access to Italy, and there's not that much going on there which you can make money from. The terrain is pretty flat and easy, but the problem is the rivers. There are - count'em - 6 rivers you have to bridge to connect up all of the main Italian cities; and the map is designed so that you can't connect any two cities without crossing at least one river.

Of course you can bridge rivers. But on this map, you make so little money in the early stages that the cost of a bridge is a major worry. In the first few years money was that tight that I ended up glued to the Trains list, urging my trains on to just bloody get there and deliver some cash ( - why did you have to stop for Servicing NOW?). Perhaps it's easier if you start off with wooden bridges set rather than stone bridges. My personal preference is to start off with stone, even though they're much more expensive, rather than making my trains slow down constantly and then ripping up the wooden bridges to replace them with stone later: but on this map, wooden bridges might be worth it to make the early stages less painful.

The number of rivers separating it from anywhere else (3) is why I avoided Milan - even though it was the biggest city - at the start. Instead I went for a short railway from Venice to PortoGruaro, after an (unusual for me) "farming" start. Usually I like to spend my initial cash on one of the cheaper value-added industries (e.g. Lumber Mill, Distillery, Textile Mill), as they make a lot of useful money if well-placed: but on this map there were no opportunities, so I went for a Fruit Orchard instead.

The big money-earner on this map is Weapons. They love those big guns in Munich, with two Warehouses demanding all the artillery you can ship there. Early on a couple of Ports will appear at Venice importing Weapons - if you're lucky they'll be seeded at the start. Weapons appear in big quantities (each Port supplies 5/year). The price gradient for Weapons is so steep that you can make a lot of money building rails along the path the Weapons take, little by little as money allows: west from Venice to Verona, then up the river valley to NE of Bolzano, from where they get schlepped over the Brenner Pass to Innsbruck.

Money was so tight at the start that I had to think outside the usual tactic of connecting cities. Verona, for example, is hard to reach from Venice, because of that river just East of it. The solution was to build as far as possible - not too close to the river, otherwise the rail-laying AI would be unable to compute how to make a bridge when I extended the track, but close enough - and plop down a cheap Small Station. The price for Weapons was high enough there to allow huge (in startup rail-company terms) profits.

The introductory animation warns you how difficult crossing the Alps is going to be. But actually, it's ridiculously easy: it just takes a lot of capital. The river valley up from Verona looks as though it was designed for a rail route (it probably was), with a nice flat floodplain on the west side, relatively free of "Invalid Position Over Water" annoyances. The gradients are nothing that a Consolidation can't take in its stride. There's even an amusing stretch where the river flows uphill for a while. The game code doesn't allow for this to draw in Passenger traffic as a tourist attraction. North of Trento there's another bit of terrain which might as well have a big flashing neon sign saying Cross The River Here pointing to it. The bridge has to cross the river diagonally, which makes it expensive, but it's easy to place. After Bolzano, follow the flow of Weapons up the valley to the NE, then turn NW, and you're almost there.

So far, the rails are relatively cheap for a mountain route, and you make money immediately from every extension, because of the flow of Weapons. Getting through to Innsbruck is the expensive part. Not difficult, just expensive. A tunnel from the sheer cliff face at the end of the valley to the sheer cliff face just South of Innsbruck gives you a nice 1% gradient all the way. This is pretty similar to the planned Brenner Base Tunnel: the historical route https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Railway goes right over the top, with just a summit tunnel and a few other tunnels. Sadly RRT3 has never been good at allowing really fun mountain-railway building, because the terrain resolution is too low, and the track-laying AI a bit basic. (Spiral tunnels... I can only dream... ).

So what people managed IRL (e.g. the St Gotthard route further west) is impossible in RRT3, and you have to build big long straight tunnels.

The only obstacle to getting to Innsbruck is the cost: $500k for access rights to Austria, and about $1.5m for the tunnel (depending on the state of the economy at the time). As long as you can raise this capital, though (and enough for a station and a couple of trains), you'll make the money back almost immediately, because of the insane price difference for Weapons either side of the mountains. This is a train from Verona, about 6 years after the tunnel was built, by which time the price had settled down a bit:

Once you're through to Innsbruck, connecting up to Munich is easy (making money from Weapons all the way). From Munich, a connection to Zurich for the Gold is again easy. Just for fun, I might try to connect up Milan and Chur as well, over a much more difficult mountain route.

There's a pricing bug in RRT3 which hits this map. It makes cargo pile up in inlets on the coast, where for some reason a cell of high price develops and never collapses:

It seems to be caused by tight corners in the ocean zone. My solution to this is to cheat it away: go into the Editor, and build a Port covering the "pile-up" ocean cell. Then build rails and a station to the Port, and get a train running to/from it. This makes the price-spike collapse, and the goods start moving away normally

[sleepy]

I agree with undertoad. In the beginning, there's not much to work with. I started in the Venice-Trieste area but the profits were paltry. I'm not big on buying industry but I took out a bond and bought 3 fruit orchards in the beginning, which were a good deal ($250-400k for $50-75k a year each) and buoyed my cash level. Venice to Verona seemed a bit more profitable. The recession hurts and only until 1881 or so was I able to start making good profits and refinance my bonds by half the rate to 6%. Unless I'm imagining things, doing that also improved my credit rating, which makes sense. I still don't know if dining cars are worth it, but passengers seemed to make up a good amount of what was being transported, so I turned dining cars on.

Connecting to Milan was expensive, costing about $900k from crossing 3 rivers with wooden bridges. Early game I was always strapped for cash so stone bridges didn't seem to be worth it. Starting from Venice, going along the Adige valley weapons prices get increasingly more expensive, to the point where shipping to Munich was nearly $300. As for the actual tracklaying, undertoad was right in that there was no need to find a path as one was basically given to you. Probably the hardest part was trying to get around these annoying industries in the way.

I ended up bulldozing the logging camp. Nothing stands in the way of progress, especially something that isn't profitable and was only worth $140k to begin with! In fact, since there was a dairy farm there, I placed a station in the area and named it after the actual town in South Tyrol (though the station may be closer to Natz-Schabs).

1887 was spent accumulating capital for the $1.8 million tunnel to Innsbruck. Then from Verona to Innsbruck, the big bucks started rolling in. Just like in Central Pacific, I had a dedicated train sending only weapons, but this time around it's less effective because I am delivering weapons on all the stops along the way, so I let it haul All Cargo. And there are very few steep sections on the way, so the Consolidation 2-8-0 zips along pretty quickly. From here on out, it's smooth sailing connecting the rest of the cities and delivering weapons for hefty profits. From 1891 on I was waiting for the 30 weapon loads to be delivered. The trip from Venice to Munich is a long one, so having the route saturated somewhat with weapons already helps. I finished in August of 1896 - maybe could've shaved off a few years by preventing weapons from Venice from being sent anywhere but Munich and better choices in my starting location. The campaign took me 4 hours to play, including pausing the game to add to this increasingly large post.

I don't actually know how cargo moves, but just to be sure I put a station next to the second port of Venice, which also produces weapons. It doesn't seem like I can actually place a small station with an area that encompasses the port due to poor map generation, so I had to use a medium station. Not sure if it actually does anything, however at one point it was delivering 3 cars of weapons to the main Venice station

(Bonus picture)

[RulerofRails]

Don't forget that Steel bridges are available. My thinking for the bridges where there is no specific goal for haulage speed:

Wood - best for short term* where traffic isn't high
Steel - good all-rounder
Stone - shines in long games

*Without writing a paragraph or three about it , rail revenues are typically high in the short term, the age-related declining delivery bonus at the stations favors this and price differentials (revenues) are sharper since established service spreads demand across the map. Of course, the player can do a lot to get more from this bonus especially if engines are cheap (depending on circumstances, definitely 100k or less, but sometimes 200k or less) so he has the option to buy trains whose main purpose is to make one haul of the cargo/es with the widest price differential/s (highest revenue/s).

Express revenues are a little different. At a new location near your existing network, passengers will, to-some-degree, anticipate your rails and be ready to travel. All things considered, short term gives better revenues, but the effect is less than with freight. A new location is a new destination for passengers to travel to. This increases the passenger pool across your network. By supposition a cheaper connection probably means that you can connect to the subsequent location faster allowing your passenger pool to increase. But on the overall not large factors, size of city and building Hotels early are of greater importance to express revenues.

When we compare rail revenues to industry profits, we have a comparison of ROI (Return on Investment). While it's hard to calculate exact ROI from rails on the fly, it's generally higher in the short-term whereas industry ROI are more likely to be fairly stable throughout a game (building industries on $0 stacks of resources is a notable exception). If network size is static, we will see this figure drop off significantly as prices stabilize. Good example is when starting a company between two cities, the first run/s gives good profit, but then profits stabilize and ROI for the second year is lower. In a larger network this effect is less pronounced, but still to beat the typical 20-30% ROI from good industry, expanding network size provides better profit opportunities over the existing network which effectively eliminates a far bit of this short-term drop in ROI. (Building Hotels early is analogous to this as well, in large cities they're a decent investment on their own, but the bigger purpose is to bump express traffic which also helps maintain rail's ROI). To sum up: an expanding network is a healthy network.^

^However, these are subtleties, it shouldn't be forgotten that cargo supply is very important for any rail revenues. If you aren't expanding towards a place with a supply of cargo (for express that's a large city), it may not be a good decision to expand, and maybe you should build an industry somewhere to generate some cargo for you to then later direct your expansion towards.

My usage of bridges:
At the moment I tend to use wooden bridges extensively in the early game (not going to define it exactly, but maybe until I max out bonds) except I will use Steel for bridges that are close to stations where later upgrade is impossible. If Steel is not available, I MAY use Stone for this purpose, but only rarely and not if a long bridge is required.

As I recently mentioned here, bridge ramps make up a considerable part of a bridge's cost. Strange lumps of land are good for allowing small ramps. It takes some practice (should I say fooling-around?). The general idea is to use a "bump" in the landscape for a sharp drop in-line with the angle of the bridge. This tricks the game into thinking that it doesn't need a large ramp. You can see this in the custom games that have been designed for low-ramp bridges. The map maker lowered the river a bit more than normal and ensures the drops on both sides are aligned. The landing is important too. Obviously, one wants a short bridge, but in the perfect situation (when not playing those custom maps) there may be a second "bump" in the landscape at the right place. There are some subtleties with other terrain features, but this is the general idea.

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This is a PopTop map so seeding is a random-ish factor. If one issues stock and places stations correctly in Verona (north, so still east of the river), and in Trieste (not covering the very east of the city to avoid laying track on the grade), it's possible to have a Verona - Venice - Trieste start using 2x Wood Bridges, all Large Stations and one train. This tends to be pretty good if followed up by a station in Portogruaro giving good local express traffic and building Hotels in all these cities.

Most of the time at least one Weapons Port near Venice will seed, but once I had to wait a little over 4 years for that. (The minimum time {as low as 4yrs with two ports} to complete this map, if one doesn't build more than one station in Munich to cheat the hauls, depends on how the ports are seeded.) As has been said above, one makes money hauling these to Verona - Trento - Bolzano even before the tunnel is completed. So it's a toss up whether to connect to Milan or head straight into the mountains. Linking up Milan can be good, but if there's no working industries there that produce a consumer cargo not already available elsewhere in the network, I will tend to bypass and head straight into the mountains especially if a second port has seeded in Venice.

I don't actually know how cargo moves, but just to be sure I put a station next to the second port of Venice, which also produces weapons.

For general cargo movement consult the map overlays for each cargo. But ports sometimes get confused by "phantom" demands in the water as undertoad's post shows.

From your picture it looks as if the second Venice port has seeded outside the catchment area (green square) of your main Venice station. You will receive no benefit from any overlap in station catchment areas, but from what I can see it appears to be a legitimate usage for a second station.

BTW, nice explanation of your strategy. Good to hear more of this.

[Gumboots]

*Without writing a paragraph or three about it

Oh go on. It's the festive season, and you know you want to.

[sleepy]

As far as I know, wooden bridges slow train speed, but most of my bridges were near my destination anyway so I figured it didn't really matter
I've never really put in the thought of express or freight cargo or how passengers really work If I read your post correctly and remember some knowledge from months ago (the last time I played this game) hotels actually generate passengers, which is completely non-obvious (there are many things this game could've done better...). I have yet to test out the strategy of placing hotels everywhere and creating a massive passenger network. I just enjoy relentlessly expanding my rail network and watching the trains roll around.

You (RulerofRails) mentioned maxing out bonds, which is something I don't usually do. Though I did spend some time near the end of the game just waiting for some profits to come in and my bond rating was at AA. Might've been able to quicken my victory by a year. As for Milan, I got the impression it was profitable over the long run, but maybe not by much. The big money isn't there and it definitely takes time to lay track there early game. Though I guess I'm arguing over finishing the game 14 years early or 16. There's lots of time to kill.