I missed the $100M in Year 4 bit. That's pretty good going. I'll have to think some more about the warehouse approach. I hadn't noticed the overheads. They were all making so much profit that I didn't give a rat's.
![Very Happy :-D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
I was thinking of going for instant gold but I got ordinary gold first (end of '32 I think). I ended up not using dodgey haulage tricks so had to wait a bit longer than late '29. I used the extra time to check out how to get more efficiency out of the network. Once I had all the Chicago-Dallas haulage requirements covered I rerouted a pile of trains. Good result. Express and freight revenue went up by a third that year, even with only a couple more trains. After doing a bit of thinking I reckon I could clock the haulage earlier without tricks. I will give it a go, just as a change from my usual focus on industry.
![thumbs_up !*th_up*!](./images/smilies/ok.gif)
This one could probably teach me a few things about good routing. One trick I did think of would be to put a lot of towns on bypasses. With this map requiring long haul trains, quite a few inline sheds and towers are needed. I usually put those on bypasses, with the main line running straight between towns. This makes for a lot of work setting all the waypoints to get to the bypasses, especially if you want to shift trains around. OTOH, if I put the inline stuff on a straight main line, with the towns on bypasses and the inline stuff next to the towns (but on the main line) there will be no need to set waypoints for long haul trains. They can just run straight through and pick up stuff when they need it. Since the shorter haul trains will be diverting to the towns, they won't hit the inline stuff and will rely on maintenance spurs at towns, which they have to be set for anyway. This will keep the average speeds for short hauls high, while allowing greater ease of setup and changes for long hauls.
![thumbs_up !*th_up*!](./images/smilies/ok.gif)
Once the depression hit I noticed a few interesting things. Since I had oodles of cash I didn't do the lay-offs. All I did was stop a pile of trains and leave just a fifty or whatever to cover the main routes. I'd left most trains running the first year of the depression, then started cutting them right back. I noticed that as soon as I stopped a substantial proportion of the roster the company overheads went down dramatically. This was an instant effect, so I figure this has to be related to the trains since other factors usually affect overhead only after a few years.
The other thing about the depression is that even in the middle of it, hotels and restaurants are still generating anywhere between 30% and 90% ROI. They're the only industry that still works, so obviously it'd make sense to have stacks of them lined up before the end of '29. Either that or change the scripting so that their profits are nobbled as badly as other industry, which would be more realistic.
Then there's the offer to get your bond money back early, at the cost of a $250k penalty. This makes a lot of sense in the middle of the depression. The prime rate is up at 14%, so a cash injection of $7.5M right then means you suddenly start earning 14% on the extra cash. This is a bit over a million per year, which is handy at the time, and is a much better rate than you would have got if you had held onto the bonds. Holding onto them for another ten years will only get you an extra $2.5M in total. You can use the high prime rate to make that much in a couple of years of depression, then have it available for use after the depression breaks.