Well, I played this on Hard,starting in 1865. Supergold in 51 years with no changes in the last 10 years, just coasting through (well, replace everything with Pacifics, and build a couple Parm plants when Chemicals appear.) All seemed very arop-like. All the familiar places... Always amazed at how carefully all the tunnels and river crossings are set up, no grades over a 3 required anywhere, and 95% of all track was laid at grade 0 or 1. Plenty of resources distributed nicely to facilitate localized industry development and hauling for distribution. Finished only hauling 962 Steel but blew everything else away, and early. Track laying, city connections, clothing all done by about 17 years in.
Made electric goal 3 years before the end... not really useful as I wasn't then going to electrify all track for 2-D-2's let alone Be 5/7's.
Note that starting in 1865, there are no locos available, Mogul in June 1865 is the first NA engine I saw checked in the Editor, so I checked more NA engines and made a good start with Standards plus some Moguls. Perhaps that trick where you set all NA engines as available, then use events to take away the electrics until we meet the generation goal?
Also played with my Baldwin 2-6-2 which was useful from 1901 until the Pacific arrives, though Atlantic does steal some of its business with its acceleration for short spurts and passenger appeal. Also, maybe this is from Lirio's edits, but the Atlantic was Outsanding reliability, and Pacific Near Perfect... doesn't seem right... unless there was some event in this game that increases reliability for some engines?
Here is an upgraded version of my map, Neotopia, called Neotopia II. 
