In the beta there was a Concrete Plant in Ranohira, this provided enough demand for the Beloha Furnace to turn a profit. But without that plant, even if we provide a demand by building a Concrete Plant in Beloha (on the same square as the Furnace), the Furnace will still run in the red for the first year. This isn't a problem except that when running in the red output is >50% of normal so our Concrete Plant wont have a good supply of Ceramics.
The solution: build a second Furnace. This will also run at a loss for the first year, but the extra profits from the Concrete Plant will make up for it. When I bought one Class A1 (for a steam-only strategy) to haul Rock in from the quarries, my first year (no economy change) was $657k (874k total revenues, with 503k from industries).
For the second year, I upgraded my Furnace and Concrete Plant. This gave a good supply of Concrete, so I need to connect a new demand to make some haulage $$$. Because the U1 (has better grade climbing) was disabled in this version, I decided to use a coastal (west) route to head towards Antananarivo. I think that if one was to carefully calculate the cost of cheapest track, the coastal vs. inland would come out pretty close (hills cost quite a bit to build over). The downside in the long-term will definitely be more mileage which will equal higher fuel costs, but since I'm hauling a lot of Concrete which has a high rot factor journey times matter. Also, the coastal cities are larger giving more demand for Concrete. Anyway, I decided for the second year to connect to Toliara. The profit for this year (still Normal economy) was $1,339k (2,027 total revenues, with 1,458 from industries).
In this case, Concrete is a good money-maker, in the short term, a new city each year up the coast, if ALL (within a reasonable limit on loco numbers) Concrete in your network is hauled to the that city with a "fresh" demand (so revenues are $30+ per load). This can be a $1M+ per year earner for those first 5 or so years.
I didn't play a third year, but the obvious is to use unconnected track to get the Coal run going. I think to go after the Coffee haulage before I built a Steel Mill, as the up-front track cost and the recurring fuel costs of producing Iron don't seem like overall it can make a great ROI. BTW, the simplest way to get the Coffee haulage is to build a countryside station covering the Farms, using Custom Consists to force load the Coffee. Sometimes it's efficient to have a local train going around a few nearby farms and dumping Coffee from several farms at one where long-distance trains are set to wait-to-fill. (Keep a periodic eye on these because ideally we always want a train waiting for a load, but if there's already a waiting train when the next one arrives, sometimes the game will stop loading the original, even if it's almost full, and give preference to the latecomer.)
*** I like to play without countryside stations so I tend to use a TM-inspired method of preventing traffic flow in certain directions, accomplished by carefully selecting the only cargoes that are allowed to travel between two or more cities that provide a "gap" through which the cargo cannot pass. Sometimes I will forgo certain connections, such as on this map I didn't connect Mankara and Mananjary to any towns south or west, so any Coffee produced there had only one direction of possible travel: north towards the port. Still needs some management with custom consists (part Coffee, part Any Cargo) and the strategy forgoes some profits, but it makes the mental process simpler. ***
PS. Remember we have ship-at-a-loss in 1.06. There's nothing against it, but if there's a better way to invest your hard-earned, no point in building T&Ds or Furniture Factories just to make a demand. As far as Tires, I produced all Autos in Tolanaro in my previous plays (placing the Auto Plant is a little tricky), but don't forget that the port recipe was changed. In the long run, the price will still crater at the Port so probably still a good idea.
______________________
ETA:
My start involved 300k player, 3M investors, plus a bond, plus 2x issue stocks. That's just over 4M to play with. 20% ROI would be 800k. Take away 50k for the bond payments, and we should see 750k. I didn't reach that target. This is a typical short- vs. long-term balance. In the second year, the industries will do a lot better after the upgrade with a 31% ROI. This should maintain pretty well throughout the game. Depends on expansion strategy and engine used as to how much rails will give as time progresses. Of course anything not done solely for profit such as the Coffee, Auto, etc. hauls will drag the average ROI from rails down.
