More demand for Autos in Pskov isn't a bad idea, but having a 1:2 conversion to Diesel with a maximum output of 4 will mean that only 2 loads of Autos can can be consumed per year. I don't think this is what you want?
I ran it for some years with the 1:2 conversion edited into a 1932 save. It seemed to be a little bit
too keen to chew cars and ship them with max production set to 6, which is I why I was thinking of reducing it to 4. I only wanted to give it a slight nudge into barely profitable.
I've tried all sorts of tricks with Pskov. I've even had three trains set to Automobiles only at Pskov, with 4 car minimums (ie: need 4 cars on the consist before they will leave the station). These trains are permanently waiting in Pskov, and set to run direct to the city with the highest price for Automobiles. That should move things, but I still can't get the price at Pskov to budge. It stays resolutely stuck in bait and switch territory.
And obviously I have other trains running to and from Pskov with normal settings. Pskov > Tartu > Viljandi > Pjarnu and back is a standard run, and these other cities all usually have a higher Autos price than Pskov. Ditto Pskov > Oskov, and Pskov > Aluksne > etc. Pskov still stays stuck in bait and switch territory, a lot of the time, so I'm not sure what else I can do.
One comment here is that the Chemicals supply at Pskov probably (haven't watched in an actual game) is inconsistent (depends on location of Muntions Factories and Fertilizer Plants) in giving revenue that can pad the small loss that the Autos->Furniture conversion might run at. Diesel is a sensible cargo to supply. What could be done is add a Diesel supply to the warehouse, but disable Diesel production there via event until the player connects.
I don't find the Chemicals supply to be a problem once I connect to Pskov. It usually (always?) has trains running to places that will draw Chemicals anyway. But this, while padding the warehouse profit a bit, doesn't do anything to encourage Automobiles to flow.
How would you only start Diesel production once you connect? Have it set to -100% in the whole of Russia until you connect to Pskov, or make a separate Pskov territory and set Diesel to -100% in that? Those could work if you wanted to do that, but I don't think it's necessary. I'm not trying to encourage Diesel production as such. I either run oil trains to Mazeiki anyway, or build my own refinery. The only reason I was suggesting Diesel production is because, out of the range of cargoes in this scenario, 1 Autos > 2 Diesel seems to be the best way of getting a slightly more profitable conversion at Pskov.
This is the recipe for re-hauling, if you do this your Lumber and Meat haulage can go very quickly (haulage within Riga territory is counted in both TO and FROM haulage numbers). Probably fitting if playing robber baron style with extra companies, but it's an exploit that IMO ruins haulage task challenge. Occasionally I will use two stations in one city, but hauling between them is a personal no-no.
Yes it can boost your haulage stats, but that's not the primary aim. The primary aim is to even out prices between the stations, which in this application are just like a large city's central station that has a series of yards and platforms. It's bonkers to have prices between adjacent economic cells in the same territory getting stuck on large differentials. In a real life situation you wouldn't have a shortage of cargo at Platform 1, and a surplus at Platform 8, and just sit around wondering what was wrong. You'd shunt the cargo.
I think multiple stations in one city is fine in RT3. People often do it just to handle congestion, which is the same reason multiple platforms are used IRL. It makes sense in this situation, where you need to run
a lot of trains to and from Riga. I'm happy to add an event to increase station building cost in Riga by 50% every time a station is built in that territory. That makes some sense, although personally I'd still build them. If people actually want to cheat the haulage goals they can do this anyway. If using shunters in Riga boosts the haulage too much, even when you aren't actually using it for that purpose, one obvious thing to do is to simply increase the haulage goals.
Incidentally I did have an idea about cargo management in this scenario. If you take the (entirely optional) Saaremaa connection then you get a lot of pax traffic, and that will tend to shut out freight to some extent. Obvious thing to do is to start splitting your roster in some areas, and run dedicated freight and express trains for better management. Given the haulage goals here it could make some sense to do things differently to a normal game, and to set your freight trains (or at least some of them) to higher priority than the express trains. If the freights are running P8's for maximum reliability and minimum running cost, the Poor acceleration rating of those means it's better to not stop them often. With the Express trains running S3's or Class 500's, their much better acceleration will make them recover from stops more easily and they should still be decently profitable. If they aren't decently profitable, simply don't run them and just haul freight.