OK, I owe the author of this map an apology. It's very well tested and scripted. It just required me to rethink my usual approach. Knocked it off in early 1877 this time, and even had enough track to double some of the heavily used sections. I've been sitting out a tropical depression after a cyclone hit up the coast, so good days for gaming.
I found out a few things. This time the player name and the seeding were different to the cookie cutter seedings I was getting before. Not wildly different seeding (it's still generally the same) but just a bit. No idea why the player name changed either. All the other times it was Lord Strathcona, but this one was different (can't remember offhand what name it was).
There are some tricks on Expert. The early game requires some industry, but not much. You can't go industry heavy early on or you'll miss too many haulage bonuses, which will put you permanently behind the eight ball. I found a paper mill between two logging camps was a good trick. It's stable income, and cheap to set up, meaning you have money left over for rail early on. I was skimping for cash in some of the early years because I was focusing on rail, so you need (IMO) just enough industry to keep you solvent. Rail alone won't keep your head above water in the early stages.
The way you do the early rail seems to be critical too. The best way is to upgrade the Sydney station to large asap, then put another large covering Botany Bay and Parramatta, then a medium at Liverpool. The medium is big enough to do the job at Liverpool and saves you 100 k (money is tight at the start). Then expand out to Campbelltown and Picton when you can, as well as Windsor, Penrith, etc. The idea is to get a tight network based on Sydney, which is where the early haulage and money is. A few carefully placed hotels and restaurants help once things get rolling, and make very good money.
Since the only goal was to maximise haulage, I ran American 4-4-0 with 7 cars and caboose on flat terrain. This gives max haulage for minimum congestion, and they're reliable if replaced when they hit 6 years old. I used this rule all the way through, even for other locomotives elsewhere which weren't hauling 7 cars. I found that if I replaced them all at 6 years I had hardly any breakdowns at all, and with the Americans being so cheap it made sense in a game that was tight for haulage schedules. I also went with too many maintenance sheds rather than not quite enough, again to maximise reliability by minimising time spent running with oil below 50%. I ended up with 66 trains in total, and could have done it with less.
With the overall haulage quota, I found that after some practice I could keep up with it until the mid 1860's. After that it started getting away from me, so I then relied on the other bonuses for haulage of wood, wool and steel. I figured out how to ace these consistently. The wood (lumber) haulage is just a matter of having heaps of trains hauling mixed consist on a diverse network. As long as the seeding is decent for logging camps and you are keeping up with the overall haulage quota, at least until the mid 1860's, you should do ok for wood haulage.
I figured out a good approach for wool haulage too. There is plenty of wool way out west but it's awkward to get to. What I did was put a textile mill up near Goulburn, right next to a sheep farm, as soon as I had the cash available. The draw from this made the Tycoonatrons cart all the extra wool up and over the range for me, and the wool just stacked up at my mill after a while. The stockpile there meant the price for wool was lower than at Wollongong, which had demand caused by two ports and a (seeded) upgraded textile mill. Once my network was at the stage where I could connect to Goulburn and Wollongong (in 1865, as it turns out) I put an extra station at the textile mill, between Goulburn and Crookwell, and ran four priority Connies from the mill straight down to Wollongong, hauling mixed consist both ways. Since the only cargo at the mill that was demanded at Wollongong was wool, they hauled wool to Wollongong port without any management. Combined with the other (general haulage) trains on the map I was averaging over 30 loads of wool a year without trying, and had about 250 loads hauled to the ports after 22 years. Once I could see I had that goal in the bag I took some of the Connies off that run and sent them down the south coast instead, leaving just one doing the wool to Wollongong haul to keep the annual quota for rail allowance bonus well and truly covered. This still worked well with my mill because I didn't upgrade that. This kept demand down at the mill, so shipping to Wollongong was ok without bait and switch, and it still chugged away making its regulation four loads of clothing every year at a nice little profit.
Came up with a nice dodge for steel haulage too. The trick here is to put your steel mill at Port Kembla, which is where it actually is in real life. I know because I've seen it.
As an Australian I know the steel mill should be there, and I bet the map author was thinking the same way. You will have to clear a bit of space for it, but putting your mill here has several advantages. The area around Sydney tends to get full of tool and dies and steel mills fighting over resources. If you put your mill down at Port Kembla, right behind your station, you get first crack at all the iron coming out of those ports, which will have upgraded themselves because of all that lovely wool you are feeding them. Your south coast run will also feed your mill iron from the port down at Bateman's Bay, as well as coal from down the coast. This means your steel production is guaranteed and the mill will do quite nicely. Since I deliberately did not build a tool and die down there, all the steel my mill made was drawn up the hill to Campbelltown etc, so steel haulage took care of itself. This was all running in the late 1860's, so the steel kept giving me rail bonuses once the overall haulage escaped me. The requirement is 5 loads per year, and most years I was hauling 10-15 without trying.
I came up with a good way of doing the overall network too (pic attached). Grades are good and congestion seems minimal (or as minimal as it can be). Katoomba is connected from Windsor, for easy grades and a short run, with Springbrook just on a spur and the actual station down on the flat (ditto for Braidwood down south). Kandos is connected from Lithgow, again for good grades and a short run, and this ties in well with the other towns in the northwest. Queanbeyan is connected by coming round the mountains when she comes, apart from a short section of tunnel just outside Goulburn. This was pretty cheap, and just got me there with that year's track allowance.
I did send special trains to get the goods haulages to Goulburn, etc but no bait and switch was used. I just sent a train when the goods were available at a viable shipping price down at Sydney, then re-routed those trains to local routes after they dropped off the goods.