RAILROAD TYCOON 3 ____ FAQ written by Scott "Zoogz" Jamison zoogz22 (at) yahoo (dot) com http://www.nabiki.com/mst This FAQ is property of and copyrighted by Scott Jamison, 2007. This FAQ is licensed to GameFAQs due to their excellent work in archiving FAQs for many games that I have played. Please do not post this FAQ in any other location without my written permission. Additionally, please do not alter this FAQ. I reserve the right to request this FAQ to be removed from any website. ____ Table of Contents ____ 1.0 - Version History 2.0 - Introduction to Railroad Tycoon III FAQ 2.1 - Game Overview 3.0 - Economics and Railroad Tycoon III 3.1 - General Overview to Economics. 3.2 - Competition. 3.3 - Purchasing and Maintaining Industries. 3.4 - Town Consumption and the Transportation Model. 3.5 - Supply and Demand - The Flow of Resources. 3.6 - Instant Manufacturing. 3.7 - Tycoonatrons and the Discussion of Competitive Advantage. 3.8 - Opportunity Costs and Time Value of Money 3.9 - Macroeconomics and Conditions. 4.0 - Railroad Tycoon 3 Controls 4.1 - The Globe Button / Station Cargo Lists 4.2 - The Track Button 4.3 - The Building Button 5.0 - Walkthrough 5.1 - Campaign Mode 5.1.1 - Go West 5.1.2 - Germantown U.S.A. 5.1.3 - Central Pacific 5.1.4 - Texas Tea 5.1.5 - The War Effort 5.1.6 - State of Germany 5.1.7 - Flying Scotsman 5.1.8 - Crossing the Alps 5.1.9 - Third Republic 5.1.10 - The Orient Express 5.1.11 - Argentina 5.1.12 - Africa 5.1.13 - Japan Quakes! 5.1.14 - The Seeder 5.1.15 - Dutchlantis 5.1.16 - Chip Off the Old Block 5.2 - Scenarios (TBD) 6.0 - Railroad Tycoon Game Patches / Updates 7.0 - Frequently Asked Questions 8.0 - Epilogue and Author's Notes ____ 1.0 Version History ____ Version 0.4 - Begun the initial form of the FAQ. Sections added in- clude the following: Framework, Author's Disclaimer, Table of Contents, Version History, Introduction, Economic Overview, Controls, and Walkthroughs (3/18 published) Version date: 28 June 2007 Version 0.45 - Proofread, linebreaked, and tweaked a couple sections. More walkthroughs to come in future releases. Version date: 3 July 2007 Version 0.5 - Added 5.1.1, "Go West" to walkthroughs on request. Try #8 at "Orient Express" not going too well either, so I will just com- plete all the other walkthroughs. Version date: 20 July 2007 Version 0.7 - Added new information to 4.2, "Track Button" in RRT3 Con- trols. Added 5.1.2, "Germantown USA", 5.1.3 "Central Pacific", and 5.1.6 "German States" to walkthroughs. 5.1.6 was added upon request. More walkthroughs to come. Added questions to FAQ. Version date: 1 August 2007 Version 0.75 - Added new information to 3.4, "Town Consumption and the Transportation Model" in the Economics overview section. Updated sec- tions 5.1 and 5.1.6 with additional information. Added 5.1.4, "Texas Tea" and 5.1.10 "Orient Express" to walkthroughs. Next plans include filling in the remaining walkthroughs for the campaigns I have prev- iously completed (7,8,9) and then being able to go on to the campaigns that I have not started, namely 5 and 14-16. Version date: 10 August 2007 Version 0.97 - Added walkthroughs for scenario 7, "Flying Scotsman", scenario 8, "Crossing the Alps", scenario 9, "Third Republic", scenario 15, "Dutchlantis", and scenario 16, "Chip Off the Old Block". Revised section 3.9, "Macroeconomics and Conditions", due to evidence presented while playing RRT3 and further research about economic policies and conditions of older times. Also added a walkthrough for scenario 5, "War Effort". Many thanks to Ez8 for providing this walkthrough. The only remaining campaign game without a walkthrough is 14, another scheduling campaign game. Therefore, considering the fact that I've played Railroad Tycoon 3 consistently for the last nine months, I will be taking a break for a while. Therefore, I will be taking a hiatus from this guide for a while as well. I will still accept any submissions that readers of this FAQ would like to provide, especially for scenario #14. I will update the FAQ if the submissions warrant it, but since most of the facts below are correct as far as I know there will be few further revisions or additions for the time being. (Last note: if you're waiting on ME to provide the walkthrough for #14, I will do it eventually if no one else steps up. But just be warned that you may be waiting some months for it.) Good luck! Version date: 31 August 2007 ____ 2.0 - Introduction to Railroad Tycoon 3: ____ Welcome! This is my first FAQ, so any comments about this work, please send them to the email address at the top of the page. I first started playing Railroad Tycoon 2 after having found it at a local store for $9, and enjoyed it immensely. I loved being able to build track and watch my little trains go all over the place. I was able to do pretty respectable at most of the scenarios and campaign as well. (Thanks, Dennis Doucette, for the RRT2 FAQ; lemme tell you about India someday!) I did not purchase Railroad Tycoon 3 immediately upon its release; I actually waited for a few months. I didn't hear any negative reviews though, and obtained my copy. But when I started playing it, I will admit that some of the differences in gameplay from Railroad Tycoon 2 to Railroad Tycoon 3 turned me off of the game at first. So then, Railroad Tycoon 3 sat in my "to play" pile for a long time afterward. As I was cleaning out my "to play" pile in December 2006, I realized how engaging this game could be. While economics will never really be a water-cooler subject, this game is based upon many economic princi- ples, and it took me a few times playing it to realize how interesting and exciting it could be. Good and bad decisions in Railroad Tycoon 2 can affect you, to be sure, but good and bad decisions in Railroad Ty- coon 3 affect you far more. It's because the gameplay model is far more robust, and goes farther to be a truer model of economic behaviour than Railroad Tycoon 2. So, by all means, don't be scared of Railroad Tycoon 3. I realized that a decent explanation of the economic system and gameplay princi- ples would be gratefully appreciated by many people... possibly back in 2005. It's now halfway through 2007, and I would be highly sur- prised if anyone even cares about this game anymore. But I felt I had to at least try to publicize it and help others to enjoy it, even if too late really is too little. Thank you for reading, and enjoy! 2.1 - Game Overview The path to winning in Railroad Tycoon 3 is basically the same in every scenario and campaign game - to build a network of tracks and trains to service the transportation needs of your current region. You are usually offered an amount of money at the start of the game, and with this money you can start building tracks and trains, and con- necting cities. More money can either be earned through your service, obtained through stock issues in the stock market (capitalization), or borrowed from the bank in the form of loans (liabilities). Some scenarios and campaign games may have different focuses - for instance, connecting two cities by rail, or raising your personal net wealth, or even outlasting all other companies to be the last one stand- ing. While there are ways that some goals can be accomplished without even placing one inch of steel track, generally the easiest path to victory is to build a rail network which is profitable. In this game, your company can make a profit two different ways. You can carry cargoes and earn a profit by taking them from one location where they are supplied to another where they are demanded. Usually, carrying raw materials to a production facility is a good example of this method. Alternately, you can also purchase raw material facil- ities and production facilities and make money on the direct usage of goods. Some players get extremely good mileage from just transporting cargoes, and it may be best to use this strategy as well if you are a beginner. Just remember that profits can be made in many different avenues! ____ 3.0 Economics and Railroad Tycoon 3: ____ Economics is a very strange art at times, and can require much ex- planation. Railroad Tycoon 3 is very steeped in economics, even more so than both Railroad Tycoon 1 and 2. Therefore, the below is a bit of an essay which encompasses differences between gameplay of Railroad Ty- coon 2 and 3, explains general economic models, and attempts to apply them to Railroad Tycoon 3. For those who have not played Railroad Ty- coon 2, my apologies; just try to ignore parts where I bring up differ- ences, as it may become confusing. There are a few areas that need to be introduced and explained in this discussion. They are as follows: 3.1 - General Overview to Economics. 3.2 - Competition. 3.3 - Purchasing and Maintaining Industries. 3.4 - Town Consumption and the Transportation Model. 3.5 - Supply and Demand - The Flow of Resources. 3.6 - Instant Manufacturing. 3.7 - Tycoonatrons and the Discussion of Competitive Advantage. 3.8 - Opportunity Costs and Time Value of Money 3.9 - Macroeconomics and Conditions. Economics is intertwined, so if you don't find your answer in one general topic, please go on through the rest of the essay, as your an- swer may be related to a different topic. Any questions you may have will also be gratefully accepted and answered if possible, and posted on the FAQ even if an answer does not exist so that feedback can be re- quested and generated. Additionally, "Tycoonatrons" is the general term I use for the in- visible "people" of Railroad Tycoon 3. For those who remember the SimCity games, just think of them as Sims. For those who played "The Sims", you can't buy them a new refrigerator. Sorry. 3.1 - General Overview to Economics. Before delving into the above topics, a deeper explanation of the game may be necessary. Some people do read the documentation that comes with a game, and some don't. For those who have already read the game's documentation or are familiar with Railroad Tycoon, please skip to the next topic below. The economy in Railroad Tycoon encompasses many different items. Some are supply items, such as logs or cattle. In order for these items to be useful to most people, they need to be processed at a pro- cessing plant, such as a lumber mill or a meat packing plant. In Rail- road Tycoon, you can build a transportation network made up of trains which can bring raw materials to processing plants and hopefully earn your company a profit. The processing plants will use these raw mater- ials to produce finished goods, like lumber (cut boards used for build- ing) from logs or meat from cattle. "Houses" in Railroad Tycoon sym- bolize the public at large, who consumes these types of items. And the more houses a town has, the more that this town needs stuff - New York City needs far more paper than Schenectady, for instance. And just re- member, one finished good may be a raw material for another process - rubber can be processed to tires, but tires are used as a raw material for automobiles. Clicking on every building and clicking the little square button will show you what every building produces and demands. Hooking up buildings which produce a certain good with buildings that demand a certain good will be supplying a demand, and this is how you get money in the game. Additionally, there are also passengers and mail in Railroad Tycoon 3. Sometimes these can be the most lucrative deliveries. Both types of "cargo" go from house to house, in essence. Most of our discussion can also be applied to passenger and mail traffic, but just remember that there's no processing of passengers - the game designers didn't make a Soylent Green factory. The key to earning money by hauling cargo is to haul it from a place which supplies cargo to a place which demands cargo. That's all there is to it. It's a bit more difficult than that? Okay, then check out a few topics below. 3.2 - Competition Everywhere, competition exists. There's more than one bank, more than one grocery store, more than one hotel. It's a fact of life, and in Railroad Tycoon 3 it's no different. Of course, you could be competing against other railroads in this game, as in Railroad Tycoon 2. But now, you're also competing against boats, trucks, and other methods of conveyance too. The game's eco- nomic model will place prices on everything, and if there is a profit to be made by shipping a material over a small amount of land or a long amount of water, then the invisible Tycoonatrons will ship it them- selves. There is a benefit to this as well. Some industries may already be producing their finished goods because the Tycoonatrons are already supplying the industries. And usually finished goods provide a higher amount of profit as well. Be sure to click on all industry buildings to see a list of their profitability; they will usually have a record of "units consumed" at the top which will show you how well-supplied the industry is, and if it is near capacity then you can practically count on this industry providing finished goods if connected to your rail empire. This also provides you with additional assistance in the form of building stations. While you do still have the option of putting small stations in some areas to capture a certain raw material build- ing, your cities can benefit from the surrounding countryside as the local farms and raw material producers will ship their goods to your station if it is close. Just be sure to understand that if you buy these industries, they may not be as profitable due to the transpor- tation costs they have to pay in order to enter into your system. Your stations also serve as an "instant transport"; if a cattle farm pro- duces cattle, it may take a month or two to get to a nearby station by Tycoonatron, but if you build a station which captures the cattle farm (puts the cattle farm in its green highlight area), the production will instantly be inside your station. It'll just cost money to buy the station. Last note, the Tycoonatrons will follow the paths of least resist- ance. They will ship by rivers rather easily and also coastal parts of oceans. I watched some goods go from one side of the map all the way to the other because of coastal squares. Mountains are far more daunt- ing though. You can compare this to your track-laying and ease in transport; laying a track parallel to a river is usually pretty easy, cheap, and results in very little grade, and therefore the trains will move quickly. Laying track over a mountain (or THROUGH a mountain) is highly expensive, and takes a long time, so you will be rewarded for your premium if you made a wise decision. To sum up, goods WILL move by themselves in some limited ways without your trains to take them. Check the globe icon and click on the spe- cific commodity for additional information, and to find out if a cer- tain facility is utilizing some other form of transport to get their goods to market. 3.3 - Purchasing and Maintaining Industries Another difference between RRT2 and RRT3 is the industry model. Al- ready discussed are the facts that some industries may already be sup- plied without your efforts. Now, purchasing them as well as industry consumption are different as well. Firstly, purchasing industries. In RRT2, you had to depend on other people buying the property and erecting the facility before you could swoop down and purchase it from them. Now though, you can place your own *production* buildings through the (station-)building menu. Just search the list on the dots/lines button. Not only do you get some of the passenger revenue-enhancing buildings from RRT2, you also get a list of production buildings you may purchase. To be sure though, you will be paying a premium on any building that you place yourself, a- bout 150% of the purchase price of an identical new facility (and pos- sibly beyond two times the price of a non-profitable facility). This can be classified as the permits and property cost, I suppose. And on any map, there will be old and new industries. Most industry buildings will not disappear once they appear, and you can see some buildings that have endured $2M of loss throughout their lifetime. The buildings now act with the economy, unlike RRT2. Now, you have to remember the maxim, "Buy low, sell high!" You al- ready knew about it from RRT2 due to the stock market. Now it applies to EVERY building on the map! If you see a factory that is productive and profitable, then it will go for a higher cost than will an unprof- itable factory. You can buy an unprofitable factory for a discount, sometimes a profoundly deep discount. This game teaches in a very profound way another business maxim, "Time equals money." Buying an unprofitable factory is cheap, but turning it into a profitable facility may take some time. Buy infra- structure to support the facility though -- tracks to hold trains which can transport goods, and stations to capture goods -- and give it some time. A small investment could turn into a cash cow. Conversely, if you find yourself needing industry profit to finish a game, buy a profitable industry at a premium. In this fashion, while you get far less of a percentage of your investment as profit, you are also spending far less time as well and obtaining a facility that gives you instant profits. Ultimately, the tradeoff between buying and supplying an unprofit- able facility versus a profitable one is made up of two things. Time, as mentioned above, and the cost of infrastructure -- you WILL be lay- ing track, building stations, and buying trains to supply your new fa- cility, right? It will take time for the new facility to start produc- ing once you supply it with raw materials. By spending money on infra- structure instead of buying a more expensive (and profitable) facility, you can use that same infrastructure to move other cargoes and obtain more profits. To summarize, you can buy industries or even build them from the ground up. Some will be already profitable, and those are usually the most expensive to buy. Some may not be producing anything, and they are the cheapest to buy. It will take time and possibly more invest- ment in track, station, and trains to turn an unprofitable facility into a profitable facility, but sometimes it uses your resources better than purchasing an already-profitable facility. 3.4 - Town Consumption and the Transportation Model Two RRT2 tycoon things have disappeared. One is the one-car unit; now, in Railroad Tycoon 3, you can ship between 50% and 100% of a car- load of any material, including passengers and mail. (Note: In RRT3, you cannot choose to ship a half-carload, it is purely dependent on the cargo levels at your station.) And remember the Railroad Tycoon 2 flags? Green for "sell all car- goes", yellow for "keep cargoes on the train", and red for "keep car- goes at station, don't sell"? They don't apply here anymore, due in part to the pricing scheme and also the fill percentages from above. Every town will now have a price for everything, and the amount that is consumed will also depend on the price. For instance, you may have three towns. The one on the west sup- plies cattle. The one in the middle is a small consuming town. The town to the east has a meat packaging plant. They may look like this: Westerham ----------- Centreville ------------ East Eastie Cattle Ranch Meat Packaging Plant If you have a train route between Westerham to Centreville, you may have one or more loads of cattle. This is because of the flow of goods, the Tycoonatrons. The closer you get to a demanding facility, the meat packaging plant, the higher the price will be for the cattle. By taking the cattle at least part of the way, you will get at least part of the money realized from shipping the cargo, and the Tycoon- atrons may take some (or even all) of the cattle you supplied Centre- ville to East Eastie because of the profit they could realize from the shipment. And here's the fun part. Say you did take two loads of cattle from Westerham to Centreville, and you also have a train coming to Centre- ville and going to East Eastie in two months. While the Tycoonatrons may have taken some of the cattle, there may be some cattle left that the Tycoonatrons couldn't ship at a profit to them still in Centreville that you may be able to ship for a profit. So your East Eastie train might pick up, say, 1.7 loads of cattle from Centreville to sell in East Eastie. In this case you may miss out on some of the profit, but in effect the game automatically caused you to flag the cargo red so that another train could pick it up, and you were penalized accordingly (though slightly) for making the cargo sit. A visual retelling of the above may look like this: Westerham ------------- Centreville ------------- East Eastie Cattle Ranch Meat Packaging Plant (Cost for Cattle: $45k) (Cattle: $67k) (Cattle: $90k) 2.0 loads from Westerham to East Eastie - base price $90k Total profit: $90k 2.0 loads from Westerham to Centreville - base price $44k 1.7 loads from Centreville to East Eastie - base price $39k Total profit: $83k As you may notice, the Tycoonatrons will skim some of the profit from the top for undertaking some shipment of cargo themselves. (Special note - the price may change slightly too, but this is pure- ly a simplification) This is why the automatic choosing of cargo is the best way to run your trains. You may not know from one shipment to the next what car- go would be best to place on a train, especially if you consider the next scenario: Westerham------Centreville---------East Eastie Notrackville Grain Farm Brewery In this example, there is a grain farm near Centreville which pro- vides grain to your station to ship, and a brewery (which processes grain into alcohol, a finished good in this game) in Notrackville. As Notrackville indicates, your track doesn't run all the way there; it stops at East Eastie. Example costs of goods: Westerham------Centreville---------East Eastie Notrackville Grain: $15 Grain: $13 Grain: $34 (Grain: $58) Alcohol: $190 Alcohol: $185 Alcohol: $176 (Alcohol: $133) By providing East Eastie with the grain, you still will get a pre- mium - $21 per 1.0 load. But because grain is far more demanded in Notrackville, where they can supply their brewery with it, the Tycoon- atrons will endeavor to ship some of the grain from East Eastie to No- trackville. And that amount of grain will be fed into the brewery, where alcohol will be brewed. Alcohol then is far cheaper in Notrack- ville, but the Tycoonatron's premium for moving alcohol from Notrack- ville to East Eastie will be built right into difference between the East Eastie price and Notrackville's price - $43 per 1.0 load. East Eastie will still have alcohol for loading, though not as much as if you connected Notrackville to begin with. By shipping East East- ie alcohol to Centerville, you'll still realize a profit between the two prices - $9 per 1.0 load. But as you notice, the profit is a slight profit compared to connecting Notrackville. And this is where you, the Railroad Baron, have to make your deci- sion. Would connecting Notrackville be worth the money invested in more track, another station, and more trains? Or would it be suffi- cient to let the Tycoonatrons supply your station down the line, so that you can then supply the stations in your current railroad network? Now this discussion leads us to consumption. There are a multitude of ways that any amount of anything (goods, food, raw materials, etc.) dwindles: 1. People taking raw materials and producing their own goods (like a cottage-industry woodworker taking 5% of a 1.0 load of logs to plane or sand for his own use). 2. Waste. 3. Theft. 4. Use (Consumption). 5. Purchase and transport. 1-3 above are minor, but will happen. They are provided so that you are aware that if numbers drop, it may be due to other reasons rather than your trains or the Tycoonatrons' shipping capabilities. We covered #4 already above with the Tycoonatrons. In Railroad Ty- coon 3, towns will now use the production that factories will provide. In RRT2, if you have a meat packing plant in a city, taking cattle to the facility created food. But this food had to GO somewhere else, it was not demanded at all in the town where it was produced. In this game, towns WILL consume goods, and it is not a bad thing. Take the following scenario: Centreville Notrackville Grain Farm Brewery Grain: $13 (Grain: $58) Alcohol: $185 (Alcohol: $133) Let's introduce a new portion now: Brewery (Capacity 3 units/year) Supply (the grain!): $58/unit Labor/Overhead: $30k/year One of the two numbers fluctuates a lot - labor. Labor are the Ty- oonatrons running the brewery, working inside. If the brewery doesn't run, then fewer Tycoonatrons are needed, and the cost will go down (but not disappear; you can't have a completely empty facility and call it "open".) One of the numbers doesn't fluctuate as much - overhead. Overhead refers to the electricity used to make the factory run, the taxes on the land and assets, and to some extent the wages of the management of the factory. Overhead will also always exist, and there's only so much you can dispense with. But with the numbers above, we can understand the following: Brewery - Consumption 2.0 Units Supply - $116k Labor/Overhead: $30k Which means that you can tell completely what the costs of this brew- ery are: 2.0 units of grain @$58/unit=$116k + Labor/Overhead $30k=$146k But alcohol sells for $133/unit in Notrackville, so therefore if they sell all the alcohol there the revenue (all money made) becomes: 2.0 units @$133 = $266 With expenses, the brewery will show a $266k-$146k = $120k profit. But imagine the Tycoonatrons. One or another enterprising Tycoon- atron may take a .25 load of alcohol from Notrackville where it sells for $133 to Centreville, where he can realize a profit of $13k. If this is all he can haul, then it makes sense that his maximum profit is $13. If he can haul .5 loads though, why not haul more if it won't cost that much more and get $26k profit instead? However, Notrackville's price for alcohol is still worth the brewery in Notrackville to sell alcohol to the general public, given limited options. If you connect Notrackville to your rail network though, your trains are in essence "buying" Notrackville's alcohol for them- selves at the same $133 price that the public may pay, and you are re- alizing the profit when you then "sell" the alcohol to Centreville at $185. But while your trains are not in station "buying" the alcohol, and if there is a surplus, remember that any Tycoonatron who's thirsty can pony up his own $133 and the brewery will sell him alcohol too. Now we get into basic supply and demand, in the next section below! Just remember, consumption is JUST like production in this game in one key way: it doesn't all happen immediately! We used the numbers above to provide an "average" price. Prices can go up and down and af- fect the purchase price of any commodity - just look at your local pe- trol station for an illustration! Another note to remember in this game is to follow the train cars! When you click on the station that your facility is served by, the list of cargoes will appear. In this list, you can find out both if your facility is being supplied and also if your facility is able to sell finished goods. You can tell this both the same way. If for instance you own a brewery, this means that you need grain as an input. The houses serviced by your station will ALSO demand grain too. Therefore, click on the station and click the grain car to see what is happening! Your brewery, as long as you zoom out far enough, should have a down- ward pointing triangle. If there is grain to be input to the brewery, then little black railcars of grain will appear UNDER the triangle's point. If so, you have a supply, and your factory should be outputting alcohol at this very second. Then, you can find out if your alcohol is being bought or not by clicking on the alcohol car in the station list. If there are black cars around the town but not in the station, then your alcohol is also being bought. Congratulations, you are likely turning a profit! If the black cars are sitting at the station though, you'd better get a train to transport them somewhere else. All that needs to happen is for them to be loaded on a train for them to be bought. So therefore, if you have an alcohol factory yet prices are pretty stagnant for alco- hol, find the nearest location that you can ship it even for a few pen- nies extra and ship it there, as you will earn the profit through the revenue your brewery just made in selling the alcohol to your train to ship. This is how I understand the revenue model for supply and production buildings in RRT3. I was perplexed recently, as I bought a steel mill which did extremely brisk business yet the steel seemed to be piling up in the town; there were upwards of 10 units of steel, yet my factory put up amazing $1.1M profits. I then realized that the two tool and die factories were not only upgraded, but operating at maximum capacity and likely purchasing the steel as soon as it gets turned out. As I honestly don't know any other way that you can possibly book revenue on a product that seems to not be getting sold, and if anyone else has any ideas in regards to this topic I would be happy to hear them. So this is what is happening behind the scenes constantly. You have Tycoonatrons trying to get ahead in life, much like you may be (unless of course, you're at university.) If you still are at university, go ask your economics professor about some of this stuff, and (s)he'll be glad to help. Alternately, send an email to the address at the top of the FAQ for any questions. 3.5 - Supply and Demand - Flow of Resources This will be a quick discourse on the basics of supply and demand, hopefully little more than a refresher course. It will focus on how the game deals with supply and demand going forward though. Let's go back to Westerham and East Eastie, and give a date of 1889: Westerham --------- Centreville ----------- East Eastie Cattle Ranch Meat Packaging Plant (Livestock: $45k) (Livestock: $67k) (Livestock: $90k) (Meat: $255k) (Meat: $235k) (Meat: $195k) Cattle Supply: 5.6 Cattle Supply: 1.2 Cattle Supply: 0.2 Meat Supply: 0.0 Meat Supply: 0.3 Meat Supply: 0.7 As you see, Westerham's cattle sell for $45k per 1.0 load. East Eastie has a meat packaging plant which needs raw materials, the live- stock, in order to process into meat. That's the new price you see on the list above. At this point, there's a reason that meat costs a lot in Westerham; they have very little, so people are willing to pay more for the small amounts of meat that local butchers may be able to pro- duce. Cattle in East Eastie are the same way, since it costs such a large amount for the Tycoonatrons to be able to move what little live- stock they can the long distance all the way from Westerham to East Eastie - some may die, some may get lost, et cetera. Still note though that *some* shipping may be happening due to the Tycoonatrons. So, your train comes to the rescue! At first, you can just do a short trip from Westerham to Centreville, and that will get the cattle moving toward the direction of East Eastie. But you may also notice that profits for the cattle you pick up in Westerham are far better in East Eastie, and they also will hopefully have meat for you to sell after their meat packaging plant starts producing. As a rule of thumb, your best profit will come from the first few shipments you undertake. Because since you're fulfilling a need, then costs will stabilize across the board: Check out what may happen by 1894: Westerham --------- Centreville ---------- East Eastie Cattle Ranch Meat Packaging Plant (Cattle: $72k) (Cattle: $78k) (Cattle: $82k) (Meat: $230k) (Meat: $218k) (Meat: $205k) Cattle Supply: 1.6 Cattle Supply: 0.7 Cattle Supply: 4.2 Meat Supply: 1.3 Meat Supply: 1.0 Meat Supply: 2.4 Your trains did this! When you filled the need for cattle to be sent from Westerham to East Eastie, you caused prices to rise slightly in Westerham - the local butcher who can still make a profit by slaughtering his own meat won't be able to find as many cattle as he used to. At the same time the ranchers will realize that there are fewer and fewer cattle, so therefore they will raise prices in order to capture more money from their service. Cattle won't be in as great of supply as before, so the ranchers can be more choosy in the prices they charge! East Eastie still needs cattle, but check out the livestock supply exampled above. If the meat packaging plant can only process (about) 3.0 loads of livestock yearly, then they're supplied for more than a year. Where might those 4.2 train cars of cattle be? The meat packing plant can't just let them go free and then go find them when they're needed... they need to store the cattle and feed the cattle before they are processed. These costs now show up in the lowered price of this cattle. And meat! Now that Westerham is being supplied with meat, the rich aren't the only ones who can afford it. If only one Tycoonatron bought meat at the local butcher for $254 before East Eastie's steaks hit the market, the butcher only got the $254. But when East Eastie's steaks hit the market, why would the marketplace only sell one steak at $254 if they can sell twenty steaks at $230? Remember, if a good isn't sold, it isn't worth anything; it's currency that runs everything. As for the one Tycoonatron who bought steak at $254? Well, if all the steak is the same, why buy steak at $254 if it's the same as the $230 stuff? This allows the one Tycoonatron to keep $24 in his pocket to spend on something else, which then allows economies to grow. Now would be a good time to inform you that everything in Railroad Tycoon 3 is treated as a commodity. This term means that the quality of an item is not considered in its pricing. Therefore, a McDonald's hamburger is the exact same meat as the steak you may buy from an Out- back Steakhouse. Obviously, in the real world this isn't the case, but the same 2.0 load of meat from East Eastie is worth exactly the same as the meat butchered by the Tycoonatron in Westerham. So, on a microeconomic scale, your trains serve to balance prices. Prices will never be truly equal, as your trains do not transport goods instantaneously nor are they always at the station. East Eastie's large supply of meat isn't all getting taken out of town unless you have a fleet of trains just waiting for it (which would probably cost too much to support), so East Eastie's prices will still be lower. As more and more meat is taken from East Eastie, the price will rise slow- ly. Please note that this will make the meat packaging plant (as well as the cattle farm) more and more profit as they go along, which make them attractive investments provided the costs were low enough. As a wrapup, supply prices are low and demand prices are high. Your company will make profit by buying at supply prices and selling at de- mand prices. Obviously, the farther apart these prices are, the more profit you will make. But remember that once you start supplying de- mand that prices will start to equalize over time, making you less and less profit each time you supply the same demand constantly. This section will connect with the opportunity costs discussion in section 3.7 as well as the macroeconomic section at 3.8. 3.6 - Instant manufacturing Railroad Tycoon 2 worked on the instant manufacturing theory, which stated that if you bring two cattle cars to a meat packaging plant, they instantly turn into two food cars. Obviously, not only did you earn money with the two cattle cars, you also will earn money by haul- ing the food cars. In Railroad Tycoon 3, this aspect is completely neutralized. Now, each facility not only has a limit to how much they can process, they also will not process these items immediately. I do not have a complete guide to the times that it takes for materials to be processed, but if anyone has figured this information I would be glad to add it to this guide. Ultimately, for the facility to produce, it needs to be profitable to produce. 99 times out of 100, it is profitable for a facility to turn raw materials into finished goods, but if you find a facility that just does not work correctly this may be the cause. The main point here is that you can't expect to sit your train for the cargo to be processed. You have to provide ample supply to an in- dustry in order to have any expectation that the finished goods will be available. As long as there is a year or two of constant supply, the industry in question will probably have finished goods waiting for transport. This isn't to say that "instant" production doesn't exist anymore. One of the most important parts of the game still happens instantly, which is building. Track, station, and even bought production facili- ties are all erected immediately, with no lag in time. If you had to wait eight years for engineers to build a bridge over a long river ra- ther than to hear the "clink-a-clink" of them constructing it immed- iately, it'd certainly change the game. 3.7 The Tycoonatrons and the Discussion of Competitive Advantage So you may be thinking, "The Tycoonatrons can ship anything. Why should I bother even building a train?" The programmers thought of this too. It'd be an extremely boring game if the Tycoonatrons did everything, wouldn't it? Remember the above examples? The Tycoonatrons could ship materials over short distances themselves. But the Tycoonatrons have two major problems. One is speed. The other is capacity. These issues become things that the railroad can do well; in economic terms, they are "strategic advantages". The Tycoonatrons are slow for the most part. Rivers and other bodies of water will speed them up and increase their capacity, but check out your trains. In the 1800s, you routinely see speeds around 60MPH and faster. In the 1900s, you have trains that can go 150MPH and faster. Think back to history... could horses match train speeds in the 1800s? Could cars match train speeds in the 1900s and 2000s, considering the fact that trains have the right-of-way? Consider even the fact that trains can usually climb hills better than horses (even if they are slow) and can also move faster than boats on the water. Building a rail, two stations, and placing a train on it is the fast -est way to get from station A to station B in this game. Your trains will effectively reduce spoilage to miniscule. The poor Tycoonatrons can't compete with your speed though, and you only have to click on the globe to notice that while the little train cars of supply radiate some way, many times they don't radiate very far. You can only walk a case of beer so far before you start drinking it. Capacity is your other strategic advantage. You may notice that it's hard for a person to carry more than four cases of beer. Put it on a train though, and it's easy as pie. If you already made the investment of a train and track, putting five cases of beer on the same train changes the cost minutely. As a matter of fact, it costs pretty much the same to haul 400 cases of beer compared to 4 cases. Selling 400 cases of beer at $20 apiece is far more valuable than selling 4 cases of beer at $40 apiece. This is how the economy runs here. Tycoonatrons can only take so much because their capacities are extremely limited. But they will try to maximize their small capacities just like you will try to maxi- mize your large capacity. Your goal in this game is to figure out how to make your trains profitable, and the way to do that is to make sure that they are hauling cargoes that can be sold for a high premium at another station down the line. Remember the overhead discussion above? In most cases, overhead is the purchasing of capacity. Buying a medium station in Railroad Tycoon 3 costs $100k, but it is a one-time cost. If you deliver only 5.0 units of mail at $20/unit, you'll break even. But if you deliver 20.0 units of mail at $10/unit, you will make a profit (20 * $10k = $200k, Station = $100k, total profit of $200k-100k = $100k). And the best part is that as far as the station goes, there is no change in cost be- tween offloading 5.0 units and 20.0 units; the station doesn't change cost. The things that are variable in this game are your trains. The more trains that you run, the more cost that will be incurred (purchase price, fuel, and maintenance as well as lost opportunity for other trains that have to stop for congestion). So by all means, maximize the profit of each of your trains. Capacity does also apply to factories as well. A factory that has a large supply of raw materials may be best served in increasing capa- city. More capacity is again an increase in overhead, as more property is bought, a larger facility implies more building materials, and all other costs. It will also be an increase in labor, as more people are needed to be hired in order to convert more raw materials. Addition- ally, if you increase supply of your finished good, you may see your purchase prices drop as increased supply of the good will result in de- creased demand. But if the demand is high enough and the facility is profitable enough, by all means increase the capacity! As in the above examples, 3.0 loads of alcohol at $133k will be worth $399k, but 5.0 loads of alcohol at $120k are worth $600k. The biggest issue is to make sure that the costs incurred to go from a profit of $399k to $600k are smaller than the increased profit. So you do have competitive advantage over almost everything else in the game as far as speed and capactiy are concerned. What do you do with that competitive advantage? In true Bill Cosby fashion, I tell you that story to tell you this one: 3.8 - Opportunity Cost The above example can be a demonstration of a principle called "opportunity cost". Opportunity cost is everywhere too! Do you want to use an extra $5 of gas to go see a friend... or did you want to use that $5 to get a bite to eat? You make decisions every day on how best to use your money, and these decisions may change on a daily basis. On Monday, you may have decided to use the $5 on food, but on Tuesday you could be regretting that decision because you really need to talk to your friend now. And then, if you have yet another $5 you can spend, you may face the same decision and then choose differently. In this game, you invest money in order to make money. Imagine you connected Westerham with Centerville, like this: Westerham ------------- Centreville East Eastie It could take $350k to build track between two cities, $200k for two stations, and another $150k for a train for a total of $700k! And the first load you transport on this track could be worth only $150k. What kind of profit is that? Costs: $700k Revenue: $150k Profit (Revenue minus costs): $550k of COSTS. That's not making money, right? But in this game, track you lay tends to stay there permanently, and the trains you place can make ma- ny shipments. (Maintenance costs exist for both, but for the sake of this conversation they are minimal) So after a while, you could make a total of ten trips between the two towns and end up making a profit of $1.2M over three years, then we can reevaluate your decision to build: Costs: $700k Revenue: $1.2M Profit (Revenue minus costs): $500k after 3 years. Good, right? Well, guess what.... you can place that $700k of in- frastructure anywhere you want, provided you have the permission. The majority of places you could place that $700k of track would give you very little revenue, which made them bad choices, but they were choices nonetheless. Imagine this scenario: Westerham Centreville ------BRIDGE----- East Eastie Say that it took $950k total to connect Centreville to East Eastie, due to a bridge that had to be built unlike the Westerham-Centreville route. But in three years, you earned $1.6M. So the profit you re- ceived from this transaction may look like this: Costs: $950k Revenue: $1.6M Profit (Revenue minus costs): $650k after 3 years. So, you would make more profit quicker if you built the connection between Centreville and East Eastie first. Keep in mind though that in our example, it did cost more as well. So, we'll do another scen- ario, where you do have the $700k to do the Westerham-Centreville con- nection, but you couldn't raise the $950k needed to create the Centre- ville-East Eastie connection the first year because of bad credit. If you first waited a year for your credit rating to rise to offer a bond, you might be able to then make the connection! You issue a bond one year later and gain $500k, which is more than enough to make your con- nection to begin with. The bond carries a 10% interest rate. And be- cause costs have risen, it now takes $1.0M to build the same connec- tion. So the analysis may look like this: Costs: $1.0M + $50k + $50k (two interest payments) = $1.1M Revenue: $1.6M * 2/3 of the time = $1.1M Profit (Revenue minus costs): $0 after 3 years. You didn't make a profit! But... you could have made more profit based on connecting Westerham and Centreville earlier! Whoops... that is lost opportunity. Everyone in the world makes opportunity cost evaluations constantly, so it's not a new principle. In the world of economics in Railroad Ty- coon 3, you may notice that opportunity costs exist everywhere - just look at all the towns you can connect! And here's one last concept for this section. The above illustration is a good way to show the time value of money. Remember waiting one year to build the Centreville to East Eastie connection? It costed a bit more to build one year later, and cut one year of revenue stream from the final total. All of the scenarios have a time frame added to it, so make sure that if you are waiting to build a connection it is because raising the money is either impossible or too expensive, or that there are no profitable connections to make at the present time. Making these decisions is definitely not as cut-and-dried as I showed above; oftentimes, you don't know how well one of your decisions panned out until possibly two years of game-time has elapsed, and sometimes even longer. But be sure that you're always thinking about the oppor- tunity costs of any decision you make in Railroad Tycoon 3, including possible missed opportunity elsewhere. 3.9 - Macroeconomics and conditions: The paper came! There's a depression! Everyone's panicking! In the real world, depressions and economic booms are overall condi- tions. These conditions are based on growth for the most part - if a economy is shrinking, then it will be in a depression. An economy shrinks when the amount of resources entering it grows smaller, in es- sence. And cash can certainly be one of those resources. Conversely, if an economy is expanding, it is because the available resources are increasing. In the normal world, growth rates fluctuate but generally stay posi- tive. This is because human industry and work becomes more and more productive, plus population increases which grow the labor pool. Re- member when you connected the meat packaging plant to Westerham? The Tycoonatrons didn't have to spend as much on meat, and that left them able to use their money in different ways. Being able to spend their money elsewhere allows for growth to happen. This is also the normal condition of the game - when the economy is normal, it is growing at a modest rate. From there though, increases in production or decreases in prices may trigger "prosperity", or an economic "boom". In this case, there is more production going on, all the way up to 120% to 125% of normal production levels. Additionally, because cash becomes more available in a prosperous economy, fuel costs and labor costs may rise because the demand for both items will be stretched. Raw materials costs can rise too, and as the chief officer of a railroad, you may want to pay attention when laying track in a boom time - it will cost more. A prosperous economy is an inflationary economy - ALL prices will rise. But sometimes, problems happen that interrupt production on a wide- scale basis, or prices increase too much to be explained by inflation and prosperity. At this point, people make do with less, and spend less too. And when cash doesn't flow as easily, growth rates may stag- nate. This can lead to economic "slowdowns", recessions, and depres- sions. In this situation, labor and raw materials cost less. Stock prices also trend downward, as discretionary income isn't available to use to invest - it is needed for necessities for the majority of peo- ple. Turning a profit in a depression is not easy, but it still can happen; even if more than half of the people aren't getting by well, there are still some people who are earning a profit and able to still purchase items. Prices may decrease in these times due to the fact that the demand does not exist, and production may also go away. The economic condition in Railroad Tycoon 3 is a good indicator of what may happen in the future. Any system will attempt to reach equi- librium, including economies. A slowdown may indicate that your rail- road may not be as profitable through the next while. While you may need to change your strategy a bit due to this issue, just remember the discussion on opportunity costs - make sure that you're either obtain- ing profit immediately or on your way to obtaining profit, and no mat- ter what economic condition you're in you'll be able to succeed. Just for your information, there is absolutely nothing that you can do about macroeconomic conditions. If a depression hits, you can't buy more trains to try to transport more cargo to get out of it; the game will randomly change the macroeconomic state by itself. Just be sure that whereever you are in the game, you're tailoring your strategies to what is happening around you; in other words, buying a lot of stocks on margin may hurt you if the game randomly goes into a recession. There are advantages to both conditions of economic activity though. In depressions, the cost for new investment is lowered - you can usu- ally lay track for less, and fuel and labor costs are lower. Supply costs usually dip lower during this time until such time that labor costs will dip to match supply costs. And of course, demand costs will also lower, probably more than the amount that the supply costs will drop. There will be less cargo available and less passengers and mail, as the money to afford more of all of these items isn't available to all people. Stocks in the stock market will go lower, as people can't spend their discretionary income on stocks when they have to purchase necessities. This is the perfect time to engage in half the maxim of "Buy low!", as long as you make sure that it is still a wise investment. In this game, bond interest rates will rise higher during depressions. I previously wrote that bond premiums should be lower in times of de- pression, but the game has since proved my wrongness. From further research, the market forces of banks and other lending organizations are far more reluctant to lend money during times of short money supply (like a depression). So they will drive bond premiums higher. The market pressure was far greater in the 1800s and early 1900s due to the fact that back in those days, currency was tied to the gold standard. The same conditions may not exist today, but the game attempts to be true to the time period in which it exists by portraying these market forces as being a deterrant to new investments. The rates for bonds in recessions and depressions can rise all the way to 8%, but will hover mostly at 7%. In prosperous or "boom" times, fuel and labor costs go up. Demand goes up, as there is a lot of money, but supply costs tend to remain static because while more money is in the economy, most supply facil- ities also increase production (demand does too if supplied). Stocks in the stock market will gain value because discretionary income can be used to speculate with, and these times are usually the times to prac- tice "sell high!", especially with companies which don't seem to be turning a large amount of profit. The bond market in prosperous times will result in lower prime rates. Again, this is more likely to happen when money has to be pegged to a gold standard and the variable levels of money in an economy cannot be as easily controlled. Because more money exists in the economy, this money is chasing a shorter and shorter supply of investment instruments thereby lowering the percentages that companies have to pay to offer new instruments of investment. In boom times, bond premiums will edge down from 6% and could even reach 5%. As a last note to this section, much of personal net value in this game will always be tied up in stocks. Therefore, keep a very close eye on the economic indicators to know if you need to ramp up your buy- ing or to possibly even cash in a few stocks for short-term use. Since many scenarios have a personal net value restriction, my best sugges- tion for these is to try to complete all the other restrictions, wait for economic indications to get better, and try to create as much wealth as possible to get up and over the NPV restrictions. After all, it's nothing more than a paper value regardless... and if you're a $20 millionaire one month and a possible $4 millionaire the next, all the game cares is that you hit the $20M threshhold once. (This game would be very difficult if $20M was demanded in cash, I would think.) This concludes both the tour of economics as a whole and how they ap- ply in the world of Railroad Tycoon 3. PLEASE contact me for any addi- tional ways that I can clarify any of the above principles as they ap- ply to Railroad Tycoon 3. Economics is a fuzzy area to many people, and it is now a far more key concept in Railroad Tycoon 3. Any ques- tions I receive can be added to an actual FAQ to append to this section for any future revisions of this document, and will likely help every- one else. ____ 4.0 - The Controls of Railroad Tycoon 3: ____ Railroad Tycoon 3 has a good instruction book, so I will cover three high points that may not be understood fully: 4.1 - The Globe Button / Station Cargo Lists The globe button is an extremely important indicator of supply and demand in Railroad Tycoon 3. By clicking on the globe icon, you can find out information about the microeconomics of your map. First, click on the globe icon. From there, you will see TONS of cars all around the map. This information may not be extremely help- ful, but at the very least you can see the stations that may have the highest amount of inventory. As a very general rule of thumb, more in- ventory is more opportunity to make money. However, your best option is to click on individual cargoes. For in- stance, if you click on "Grain", you will see triangles pointing down and triangles pointing up. The triangles pointing down are areas that demand grain, and the triangles pointing up are areas that supply it. You should also see black rectangles which symbolize carloads of grain. For instance, if you see a town with a brewery (downward-pointing tri- angle) with no railcars going toward it, you can be somewhat sure that the demand for grain is high because there is no supply. If you have any grain cars, divert them to the area. However, if you see a brewery in a town and small black rectangles going towards it, it is likely that the brewery is being supplied and you can possibly pick up cargoes of alcohol near (or if you connect the city, in) the city. Also, be sure to check out the red/green coloring on the map. It symbolizes the price for the commodity you choose. You can take car- goes toward the green areas and pick up higher profits than if you off- load them to red areas. Additionally, you can check prices themselves within the station dia- logue. If you click on a station in any city, you will see a list of all cargoes available in the scenario. You can find out what cities are demanding certain cargoes and the prices, as well as finding out what towns are supplying certain cargoes. This is also a good way to find where to create new passenger routes. Just make sure to notice the "supply" numbers, as a route that only has 0.8 loads at $25k per load is not as lucrative as a route that has 1.6 loads at $20k per load. Use this information in conjunction with the information you receive when clicking on buildings as well. For instance, you may see 0.3 loads of grain in a town with a brewery, so you may assume that the town demands more grain. But if you click on the facility, you may find out exactly how much production the brewery had the last three years - you may even find out that it's running at near capacity, which would make your grain shipments less lucrative than you may want. 4.2 - The Track Button Without track, you can't run any trains. This is usually a bad thing. The track button is rather straightforward, but there are op- tions that you should be made aware of. Firstly, you can choose wheth- er or not to try to build overpasses, which will cost more but it will allow you to build crossing overpasses so that trains do not have to stop at certain intersections. You can turn the option from "on" to "off", and building overpasses is more expensive than not. Next is the bridge button. Bridges obviously allow your train to cross water. You have four choices here, "common", "average", "rare- ly", or "never". The reason for four options is that you can build bridges *near* water, and will not get weird grades if you use "com- mon", but the cost of additional bridgework will be higher. After this is the tunnel button, which is the exact same as the bridge button, offering the same four choices. Again, the tradeoff is higher expense for lower grades. The last option on the right is for electic track, which is either on or off. Make sure you pay attention here, because there are many cases where electric trains may be superior to steam or diesel trains. Since you have to have the track electrified in order to run the trains, make sure you turn this option on _when needed_. Don't confuse this with the little button at the corner, which shows a lightning bolt and a track - this is to electrify all your track automatically. Electrifying all of your track at the same time, especially if you have a lot of track, could be exceedingly expensive. If you're plan- ning on gradually introducing electric trains due to the cost of laying the appropriate track, then go slowly. Just lay the track you may need immediately, and once you expand electric routes then you can go back and build more. Lastly, make sure the bridge you need is the one that's turned on. For occasional traffic crossings, use wood. For a higher volume, use steel. Finally, for an extremely high volume, stone. You can choose to build single or double track with the steel and stone bridges, the wood bridges come in only one flavor - one-track. When laying track, the game has a good way to notify you roughly how expensive your track will be. You will see color-coded numbers above the track which will indicate the grades of the track that you will be building. But because a track cannot be built without making sure that the right-of-way is smooth, you will also see that the track *itself* will be color-coded, and this color may not match the colors of the numbers above. This is because the track color will correspond to the track bed that will have to be laid. If the track bed has to be raised in order to run a railroad, it will cost more! Green track is track that does not need a bed, and yellow and red indicates more expensive track. (NOTE - In track-limit scenarios, building double track WILL take your track limit down by two instead of one.) Also, make sure that you're very familiar with the undo button. The best method I've found to playing the game is to pause every time you are building an important or expensive piece of track (such as a tunnel or bridge) and to examine it from every angle. The AI for track build- ing is not always perfect; I had one game where I built a major suspen- sion bridge, $700k worth and about two years in, and I came to find out that the game somehow put in a dip leading to the bridge of 15 degrees with an incline of 16 degrees, all on one tile of track. Therefore, if possible, examine the track you're building from as many angles as you can before moving out of the track-build screen, because track becomes permanent if you click on ANYTHING else. (Exception: If you don't pause, the end-of-year report will pop up, but you can exit out of it without exiting out of the track-building screen and therefore invalidating your undo option.) 4.3 - The Building Button Most people should be well familiar with the station building but- ton, as without stations you cannot schedule trains. But the main is- sue in this dialogue box is the button within the building dialogue box which has dots and lines. Be sure to not forget it! This is where you can purchase both your passenger-revenue increasing buildings such as hotels and taverns, post offices, and production buildings. Don't ig- nore production in this game! A building worth $2M may seem like a heavy investment, but if it is well-supplied and maintained, it can bring in five times that amount as a long-term ten year investment. As in RRT2, production buildings can also sustain through bad economic times as well. ____ 5.0 - Campaigns/Scenarios: ____ 5.1 - Campaign Mode: With this last update, there is very little left to do other than minor tweaks and revisions. If anyone would like to submit additional information or possible strategies on any of the below walkthroughs, please email me at the address at the top. Additionally, I would also like to request for any submissions to be accompanied by the type of credit you would like (none, name, name/email, etc.) as well as whether or not I am allowed to edit any of your submission. As you may see, if you provide a (working) walkthrough for Scenario #14, you will probably get your submission and name into this guide. I will attempt to test any walkthroughs received though, so make sure that I can get gold without having to edit or revise too much. Thanks! 5.1.1 - Scenario 1 - Go West! Bronze Medal: Connect Boston to Buffalo by 1866. Silver Medal: Connect Boston to Buffalo by 1861. Gold Medal: Connect Boston to Buffalo by 1856. Time Frame (Time Limit): 1840 - 1866 (Maximum 26 years) Special Restrictions: No unconnected track, cannot resign. Starting Position: Your character and $250k of private capital. Welcome to Railroad Tycoon 3! This scenario is a good warmup and a nice introduction to the world of trains and laying track. The goal here is to get from one side of the map to the other, and it's not a particularly hard goal. Your character has $250k of private capital, and investors are will- ing to bankroll your new operation to the tune of $2.5M, so let them! With $2.75M, there's a ton of stuff you can do to start off right. Boston is your most important city, so start there. Connect Boston to Lowell, Worcester, and Providence to start. Buy four trains, one to service each city to Boston. And finally, make sure to place at least one maintenance shed and a few water towers. Your initial return on this will be about $200-$300k for the first trips there-and-back, so your next stop will be Springfield. Set up one train from Springfield to Boston, and check inventories at all sta- tions to make sure that you don't have another hidden route, such as a possible Providence/Worcester route. As profits start rolling in, the computer players will probably spring into action. One will likely connect New York City to Edison, and the other will likely build a track to nowhere. Just ignore them. By about 1845, your profits should be stable enough for you to ex- tend your lines to Hartford. Keep an eye on all inventories, because keeping a stable and profitable company is key right now. After Hart- ford, connect Bridgeport. Then see about extending your track to your competitor's station in New York City. Don't worry about possible pro- fit loss connecting to your competitor; you probably won't even give your competitor $200k just for using his station through the rest of the scenario, and don't bother wasting money on a merger either. Just make sure you have *PLENTY* of trains, at least around ten or so, that all of them are making at least some profit, and that there are enough water towers and maintenance sheds for all the trains. Now that you have a stable line in the East, it's time to go north along the Hudson River. Make sure that you try to go from Bridgeport across the smaller foothills along the edge of Long Island, and then move north along the Hudson. You may have to pause the game in order to find the best lines along the river, and make sure to use the "undo" key as much as needed. The track that is laid to Poughkeepsie as well as to Albany needs to be as level as you can make it WITHOUT having to resort to bridges over the Hudson River; those can be expensive! At about 1846 or so, a new train will appear -- the Baldwin. Don't bother upgrading the rest of your fleet of Norrises, just start buy- ing Baldwins for routes from Albany and Poughkeepsie to the rest of your tracks. The money that can be made from the first few runs between Albany and the cities that previously couldn't get to Albany will be rather lucra- tive, and should give you about half the money you need for your final push. Remember that the ONLY GOAL is to be able to get to Buffalo. You don't need company value, or even to be profitable at the end. Therefore, build as far as you can and let bonds take you the rest of the way! At this point, still make sure that you can lay track as cheaply as possible, which means as level and as free of bridges, but feel free to float five or even ten bonds to connect the end of the line. All that has to happen is for Buffalo to be connected. If you need any additional help, the game gives you a big piece of pie in 1848 - a paper will announce that the gold rush is on, which will bump passenger traffic by 50%. After that, you can also choose to invest $100k in train speed, to increase your trains by 15%. Don't bother advertising, the 50% passenger increase should be more than enough to keep your trains stocked with revenue-producing cargo. If you need any additional revenue, these passengers will provide it in spades. That's all there is to it! You should be able to make it by 1850 or so as long as you keep making profitable trains and keep laying track, and as long as the economy stays relatively reasonable. 5.1.2 - Scenario 2 - Germantown, U.S.A. Bronze Medal: Connect St. Louis to Cleveland, company book value $10M Silver Medal: St. Louis to Cleveland, company book value $25M, lifetime industry profits $5M. Gold Medal: St. Louis to Cleveland, company book value $40M, lifetime industry profits $10M, only surviving railroad. Restrictions: Can start only one company. Time Frame (Time Limit): Jan 1850 - Dec 1880 (31 years) The Midwest Map returns! In this scenario, you will be pitted against four other tycoons who will definitely build their own companies and railroads. You have your own options for starting points though, since you will be building your track immediately and you can put track anywhere you choose. You have a few good areas to pick from, in my estimation: Chicago/Milwaukee area (including Madison, Green Bay, etc.) Davenport/Cedar Rapids/Minneapolis area. Detroit/Toledo/Cleveland area. Middle Indiana - Terre Haute/Indianapolis area. You could also possibly try Cincinnati/Columbus as well, but the towns which carry the best stars tend to be in the north. For this scenario, both times I played and medalled I started in with the third set, Detroit/Toledo/Cleveland. The computer will usually take the Iowa/Minnesota region and will generally put at least one other railroad in Michigan -- either Kalamazoo/Holland, or Lansing/Saginaw, or maybe even both. In this scenario, you do not have to worry about personal net worth, but I suggest that you pay attention to it anyway. In order to force mergers with companies, the best tactic is to own at least half of their company. This way, your own company can lowball the merger price and the remaining investors (as well as your competitor) can't say a thing about the merger. Of course, your railroad will grow exponentially to begin with, so by all means invest in your railroad as much as possible to start and try to use your railroad to do occasional stock buybacks. The best part about using the Detroit/Toledo/Cleveland nexus is that you have Cleveland already connected to two other profitable cities. Additionally, northern Ohio/northern Indiana do not have too many profitable towns to connect for a railroad track heading west. Mich- igan does tend to have at least two one-star towns other than Detroit (usually Saginaw and Kalamazoo), a fun port in Holland which tends to demand a multitude of items, keeping prices high, and there also tends to be a lot of good supply buildings in Michigan, such as iron mines and dairy farms. As well, since the computer usually starts at least one railroad in Michigan and usually never expands past the first two connections, when you take that railroad over through merger you will be able to gain infrastructure while at the same time accomplishing gold-medal goals. Now, another fun part that you can take advantage of if you'd like: when you have a computer player setting up shop near you, do not be afraid to connect your track to theirs! If you are able to get a track that goes almost all the way to his own station (or better yet connects directly to the station), you will be able to then use his station for a pittance. When you're only using between 2% and 5% of their "track", that means that of a shipment of $100k, you will only have to pay either $2k up to $5k for that use. Just consider at that point then that if you needed to build a large station to accomodate that town just to avoid the usage fees, it would have taken you between 40-100 $100k shipments to pay for that large station. And the SECOND fun bonus for connecting to opponent's track is that the computer will occasionally make the "shrewd" business decision to utilize this link to ship to your rail stations. At this point now, they're undertaking the shipment costs including fuel and overhead and will be giving YOU the "usage" costs. Even if you have a short connection of 60%, that's money that you're earning for not even lifting a finger. On top of that, the computer could be shipping you cargo that could be demanded highly by a station that's farther down your track. Therefore, you can take that cargo and earn even more profit from it! So don't be afraid to connect to your opponents, it will usually serve lucrative for you and may even serve lucrative for your opponent. Just make sure to start buying into the company either before or just when the link is completed with an eye towards a merger. For the industry profits, just identify production buildings which may not be profitable, and hook them up! Supply buildings are cheapest, but unless you buy a lot of them and keep them maintained earning the profits will be tough. If you need to create a new industry vector, for instance if there are no lumber mills for processing logs, then by all means build one! Try to make at least $500k profit per year within ten years' time, and shoot for $1M per year within the next five years after that. To illustrate, $500k per year would be either six to seven supply facilities (farms, mines, etc), two good production facilities, or one well-supplied upgraded facility. From here, micromanaging should be over. Make sure to monitor the supplies of materials at all of your stations though to build as many profitable runs as you can. Keep an eye on your profits, issue bonds if needed to reach larger towns or to buy/place new facilities, and keep heading west towards St. Louis! Of course, there's one last issue for a gold medal, which I will cover below. I would like to just mention a couple words of warning about mergers. It is in your best interest to keep your personal net value economic- ally healthy in this scenario due to the above described reason, buying equity in other companies so that they can't resist merger attempts. Therefore, once the first three or so years passes, do not margin your personal net value heavily. Make sure that you have wiggle room. Also, make sure that you have a *controlled* buy-in, or that you buy shares in multiple lots. Holding SHIFT key while clicking on "buy" for a stock will let you buy 5,000 lots instead of the usual 1,000 lots. By doing this, you will not pay as much for all 5,000 shares as you would have if you bought the stock 1,000 by 1,000. When you view companies, they will have a book value and a share value. The book value is the price per share which encompasses all of their assets - track, trains, stations, facilities, even any production buildings they may own. The share value is a reflection on the book value PLUS the expectations that the company engenders; if the company is losing money, the share value will likely be lower than book value. Just because you may see a company with a book value $50 per share and a share value of $15, make sure you check it out before jumping in full-bore! The biggest issue with mergers is that any financial lia- bilities that the company is dealing with are transferred to the new company. Therefore, you will be responsible for paying ALL of their bonds. If they have $2.5M in bonds, be sure you know about it and can absorb all of those bonds before you merge! 5.1.3 - Scenario 3 - Central Pacific Bronze Medal: Connect Sacramento to Salt Lake City. Silver Medal: Connect Sacramento to Salt Lake City, $20M company book value. Gold Medal: Connect Sacramento to Salt Lake City, $20M company book value, plus ship 10 loads of troops between San Francisco and Salt Lake City. (Troops will not appear until cities connected.) Restrictions: Cannot start any other companies. Cannot build unconnected track. 800 tiles of track provided to begin, 100 additional tiles provided per year. --IMPORTANT-- In this scenario, you do NOT get track recredited to your account if you bulldoze it; you only get track recredited to your limit if you undo it. Additionally, double track will take two units of track per tile, so use extremely sparingly. Time Frame (Time Limit): January 1850 - December 1874 (25 years) Welcome to sunny California, in the middle of the 1800s! In Railroad Tycoon 2, you had to build across all of the Rockies *and* the Sierra Nevadas, but all that you have to deal with here is the initial escarp- ment of the Sierras and then the rolling intermountain region. Thank- fully, the designers of this map provided assistance in a couple im- portant ways. My best start consists of connecting Sacramento to Stockton, and then continuing south to Madiera. From here, build to San Jose and the San Francisco Peninsula, where the dock and barracks exist. One of the biggest complaints I could have is that San Francisco in this scenario consists of *both* the north and south peninsulas (where San Francisco and Oakland would be) and then also adds the back end of the San Fran- cisco Bay too. There's no way to build one large station to accomodate all three areas, so don't bother trying. Every time I've played this scenario, I've had to use three stations to split up these three areas. Anyway, from here make sure that freight cargoes are desired every- where. The last game I played turned out to be rather lucky, as Stock- ton had a weapons factory that needed to be hooked to the lumber mill in San Jose and received iron from both Sacramento as well as the sur- rounding Tycoonatrons. These weapons sold for a high premium in San Francisco's barracks. Additionally, the fruit farms around you will start paying you $150k as a bonus if you ship five cars of produce *anywhere* per year. If you do not have a distillery hanging around, feel free to build one, and make sure that it is *away* from the fruit farms; this way you can make profits hauling the fruit to, the alcohol away, and the Tycoonatrons won't be moving the freight. Also note, San Francisco's dock demands produce. As a last touch, you can connect Yuma City too, and if there are any missing finished goods (alcohol, goods, lumber, meat) try to raise money for a facility. About this time, when you have most of California humming along with your trains, you will receive an offer of 25 more track per year for $100k per year. The produce farmers' stipend can cover this $100k, and it is DESPERATELY needed to win the scenario. Don't worry if you can't pay the first $100k immediately, the game will automatically deduct even if you're in negative numbers if you choose "yes". And your chan- ces of getting a gold medal in this scenario become much greater if you choose "yes". Around late 1850s you should now turn an eye towards building up the Sierra Nevadas. The designers provided what amounts to a staircase for you to be able to build track up, so that your track will rarely (if never) go over 10% grade. To find this staircase, look east of Yuma City. Zoom out the map if needed, and you should be able to notice a small brown line curving north and eastward through the first set of mountains. Even better, make sure that the grid is turned on for when you build track. Anyway, go up this natural staircase and build over to Reno. You will need to pause the game and make sure that you have either around $2M or the ability to issue a couple bonds in order to make this connection. Once the track is built, now you need trains to service Reno. Ameri- cans don't climb hills well, and if you're building a route mostly up the hill then feel free to use Shays if you'd like. Build over to Car- son shortly afterward, but make sure that you don't unnecessarily use track. At this point, take some time to create more train routes, keeping in mind that you may not want four-car loads on trips going to Reno or Carson due to the incline. A single track going up the Sierra Nevada will get clogged extremely quickly if you start scheduling trains from California to Reno or Car- son. If you build only one length of double-track in this game, build- ing it up the stairway itself would probably be best. Around 1860 or so, the Consolidation engine will come available. It climbs hills far better than the American, and is faster over flat land than the Shay. At least make sure to replace your mountain trains with the Consolidation, if not all of them, and use them for the rest of the game. Also around this time, the Civil War will break out, and this will result in increased costs for weapons and ammunition. I hope you have one of these factories about, as the bonus is extremely nice. After you get to Carson, make sure that your railroad is pulling in good money from its routes and that you haven't missed too many other profitable routes. From Carson, you will have to get to Salt Lake City and you will likely run out of track before you get there, well before if you had to bulldoze any track. If you want to build the direct way, up and down hills, it will save you track but cost a ton and will be impractical for finishing the gold-medal restrictions. The best path I found through the rolling intermountain region is to stick towards the south. You still may have to deal with some higher grades if you take the Gabbs - Tonopah corridor, but it will be rather reasonable for the most part. As well, this way you can connect many of the larger towns of Utah on your way to Salt Lake City (such as Provo, Fillmore, Cedar City, etc.). Remember that if you run out of track to lay to just wait until next year, and make sure that you're still getting as much profit as possible. As long as you are able to make the connection by about 1870, you should hopefully be able to complete the gold-medal restrictions. Just build one- or two-car troop trains and make sure to send them off as SOON as you see more troops come available. Set all your troop trains to highest priority, and force them to carry not only troops but a caboose as well. I was able to obtain gold by 1874 after making the Salt Lake City connection by January 1870. 5.1.4 - Scenario 4 - Texas Tea Bronze Medal: Obtain $15M in company cash, haul 50 loads of oil. Silver Medal: Bronze Medal conditions plus haul 30 loads of coffee from Mexico. Gold Medal: Silver Medal conditions plus $15M personal net worth. Time Frame (Time Limit) - January 1888 to December 1917 (30 years) Restrictions: None! Starting Position: Your personal computer character and $100k. This map is a rather straightforward map, and you will be concerned with cargo types as you may note in the restrictions. The best thing to do before starting would be to pause the game and to check all of the land to see what kinds of production you can expect. You may note that the flat parts of eastern Texas (and Oklahoma) lend themselves well to Tycoonatron shipping, as some production facilities have very long supply lines. This means that you may not make as much money as you would like in transporting raw materials, but also know that these production facilities may already be producing finished goods, too. Also before you start, you have to take a good look at your victory conditions. Personal net worth victory means you can start with a limited budget so that you're not having to buy back all that stock and possibly opening yourself to margin problems. And then, this new "company cash" bit. What company cash means is that you actually have to have $15M of *disposable cash*, the stuff that you use in order to build rails and whatnot. Company cash does not come without some type of infrastructure of profit though, and the other half of the bronze medal requires you to ship at least fifty loads of oil to boot. Therefore, start! My suggestion is to start with only a limited amount of capitalization, enough for you to be able to connect two cities by rail, buy two stations, one train, and perhaps one water tower. You should at least keep 20% of your company in the initial capitalization phase. As for towns to connect, the easy choice would be Dallas and Fort Worth. The fun part is that you can actually SEE how Fort Worth pretty much becomes a Dallas suburb if you start here; both towns will start to grow into one another as you provide rail service through the course of twenty-five years. Other options for starting are Austin and any other smaller town, and Houston to Beaumont. Following your starting location, my suggestion is to start building to the starting location you didn't take. If you did not connect Dallas to begin with, try to get there even if the computer takes it. Feel free to connect to his track too; as your company gets bigger, you can swallow his railroad up in a few years. If you started in Dallas and Fort Worth, my suggestion is to try to get down to the Beaumont and Houston area; it's long, straight, flat land and the length of the track will allow for higher-priced loads. Before too long, you also want to check the map for oil. Fifty loads in thirty years may not be too difficult, but in reality by the time you find and connect oil into your lines you could conceivably have twenty-five or even twenty years left, meaning that you should shoot for at least two loads of oil yearly. Whenever I've played this map, Nagodoches has a supply of oil and since it's in the eastern part of the map, by all means stay in the east for now. As well, Shreveport is a valuable town to connect because their warehouses demand goods, which will keep prices higher. As you go along, just keep adding connections and buying industries which seem profitable. Don't worry about Mexico for a while, especially since their access rights are extremely expensive -- $10M. Around 1894 or so, Mexico will offer you a major sweetheart deal: you can obtain access rights for only $50k as long as you connect Monterrey to the U.S. within five years. Laugh and take the deal, because guess what... all you need to do is to connect Monterrey (with whatever station you desire) to McAllen, Texas, just across the Rio Grande. You don't have to build connected track, remember? Better yet, Monterrey's warehouse provides 4 coffee per year, and McAllen will demand coffee at least initially. There are zero coffee farms on the Texas side of the border, but you may also find one or two more coffee farms in Mexico near this area too. Just build any station in Monterrey, the track, a water tower and maintenance shed, and any station in McAllen. It may cost $500k to $650k after all of this, but having the coffee connection started and getting cheap rights to Mexico is worth it. Don't be afraid to go north, either. In my game, I found that all of the dairy farms were to the north, and milk became a sufficiently de- manded cargo throughout my lines that it was worth connecting Oklahoma City, Lawton, and Tulsa. By all means keep in mind the possible oppor- tunity costs, as Monterrey also became extremely lucrative through their textile mill once I connected to McAllen. You can always check prices through both the station dialogue box by clicking on specific commod- ities, and also through the globe icon. Expansion is very necessary in this game though, and don't forget about connecting to your opponents' track too! Electric trains will be introduced in the early part of the 1900s. Electrifying track may cost $3M or thereabouts by the time this happens depending on your expansionistic habits, but the train (2-D-2) is a definite upgrade over the majority of the trains you already have. Its top speed is higher, doesn't have to stop at too many water towers, and only costs $50k to boot. Upgrading all your trains may end up costing another $1M or so as well; so just make sure that you can get a defin- ite return on the $4M or so you may be spending for this, especially considering it's more than 25% of your final goal. Later in the scenario, you will get an additional boost - Beaumont will "discover" oil, which means that there will be new oil derricks popping up around Beaumont. They may be a good investment to buy, as Beaumont's dock demands oil naturally. Of course, this also will help you to be able to get the 50 loads transported if you're having problems dealing with Nagodoches. Unlike personal net worth, if you have all the other restrictions met the game will award you gold the very second you obtain $15M in company cash. $15M in personal net worth is guided by the restriction that it has to be at the end of a month, but it is rather easy for your invest- ments to be able to pay off that large if you invest well to begin with and just keep monitoring the situation even briefly once a year or so. Of course, if you're missing loads delivered, you will gain gold the second they're delivered if all the other restrictions are met. If you have problems with personal net worth, there are two other ty- coons about and between them they should have at least *one* surviving railroad. Feel free to buy in to another company as a way to earn money on your investment! Try to set a base price that the stock is around: for example, if it's usually at about $35 per share, try to buy it when it is under $40 and at no other time. (If the stock is appreciating, then it would be a good idea to buy it anyway, right?) Then, when you have a sizable investment, use your railroad to merge with the company and provide a healthy premium, say $50 to $55 per share. This way you will not only get cold hard cash for your stock, you will also earn between $10 and $15 per share. Because it's cash, it will also allow you to buy more on margin. 5.1.5 - Scenario 5 - The War Effort. Bronze Medal: Deliver 10 loads of weapons, ammunition, and fuel to either Norfolk or New York. Silver Medal: Deliver 15 loads of weapons, ammunition, and fuel plus 5 loads of clothing to either Norfolk or New York. Gold Medal: Deliver 15 loads of weapons, ammunition, and fuel plus 10 loads of clothing, meat, and cheese to either Norfolk or New York. Time Frame: 11 December 1941 0600 to 15 December 1941 0600 (4 days) Starting Position: One train of your choice between EP-2 Bipolar electric and H-10 2-8-2 steam, and tons of track (as it's a scheduling scenario). Restrictions: No buying track, buildings, or trains; time passes slowly [The walkthrough for this campaign game is courtesy of Ez8 (ez8ez8 [at] gmail [dot] com). Many thanks to this contributor for sending a walkthrough for this scenario!] [I will still solicit any additional comments for this scenario, just like any of the other walkthroughs above as well.] It's important to note that a port (New York or Norfolk) has to re- cieve ALL of one type of cargo for it to count. If you deliver 5 Ammo to New York, you have to deliver the other 10 Ammo to New York or you will not complete your objectives. Whether this is a game design mis- handling or an intentional part of this scenario, I do not know. First off, you have to pick your starting location and train. Ba- sically your choice can be narrowly defined as steam engine or elec- tric. For your first train, the electric EP-2 Bipolar is your best choice. It will make less service stops than a steam engine since it doesn't need water, and has a top speed of 70 mph. Incidentally enough, the top speed is also far better than the H-10 engine. Here's your complete routing schedule for the EP-2 Bipolar. STOP STATION CARGO CABOOSE? 1. Philadelphia 4 Any Cargo Y 2. New York None Y 3. Allentown 4 Any Cargo Y 4. New York None Y 5. Dover 4 Ammo Y 6. New York None Y 7. Balitmore 6 Weapons Y 8. New York None Y 9. Washington D.C 6 Ammo Y 10. New York None Y 11. Harrisonburg 1 Ammo Y 12. Winchester 1 Ammo 6 Weapon Y 13. New York None Y 14. Cumberland 2 Clothing Y 15. Roanoke 2 Clothing 4 Cheese Y 16. Norfolk None Y This train should not break down thanks to all the cabooses you have and its high reliability. If it does, don't worry, there is plenty of time for it to repair and keep on schedule. After day 2 (12 Dec) you'll get to choose another train. Choose the Pacific 4-6-2 near Charlottesville. This is a powerful steam engine with a top speed of 95 mph. Here's your complete routing schedule for the Pacific 4-6-2. STOP STATION CARGO CABOOSE? 1. Dale City 4 Fuel Y 2. Norfolk None Y 3. Danville 6 Fuel Y 4. Norfolk None Y 5. Salisbury 5 Any Cargo Y 6. Norfolk None Y 7. Lynchburg 8 Clothing N 8. Norfolk None Y 9. Roanoke 6 Meat Y 10. Norfolk None Y This train will run fast and is very reliable. Even if it breaks down you'll have a buffer, albeit a small one. Finally, just before the final full day starts you'll get to choose between making your current trains faster or an electric GG-1. In order to go for the gold you'll need to get the GG-1 to complete the last couple of items. With a top speed of 100 mph you'll be able to keep your schedule and maybe pick up a few seconds. Here's your routing schedule for the GG-1. STOP STATION CARGO CABOOSE? 1. Altoona 4 Cheese Y 2. Pittsburg 4 Cheese 4 Meat N 3. Norfolk None Y 4. Baltimore 2 Cheese Y 5. Norfolk None Y Every time I've played this scenario with the above routing schedule the GG-1 is the only train that breaks down and every time it makes for some nail biting suspense. However, as long as the GG-1 breaks down only once your last load of cheese will roll into Norfolk at around 5:00am on the final day. Congrats, you've made it! 5.1.6 - Scenario 6 - State of Germany Bronze Medal: Connect 6 German states Silver Medal: Connect 10 German states, $8M in personal net worth. Gold Medal: Connect 13 German states, $15M in personal net worth, 25 year time limit. Time Limit: January 1848 - Dec 1877 (30 for Silver/Bronze, 25 for gold) Special Restrictions: Cannot build unconnected track. Cannot start new companies. All states marked with "G-" indicate German states. Starting Position: $100k personal wealth, $1.1M company wealth. This scenario is the first of the European scenarios, and it will actually be a decent test of your ability to create a profitable railroad as well as to keep investing in it. You must be able to build a profitable railroad, because you will have to deal with purchasing access rights throughout Germany. To provide an overview, if gold is your goal, then you need to be able to connect every little German state possible PLUS being able to buy in to at least one of the big three $10M states (Hannover, Prussia, or Bavaria). You also do get your choice of starting location, which I will attempt to run down. Bavaria: This is southern Germany, and it does contain more than a few large towns. Track laying may be a bit expensive here due to the grades and trees, but there are more than enough towns to start from. There is a penalty for choosing Bavaria, as station building costs will be increased 15%. Hannover: This is western Germany, along the Rhine river. The towns are a bit closer here, and there is a hidden benefit to using Hannover: that one of the smaller German states, Olmstead, is completely surrounded by Hannover. On the other hand, there are a couple of choke points in Hannover where you have to build track in a certain direction in order to avoid Prussia or Bavaria. The other disadvantage to Hannover is that it's a small amount of land, and while it does have a few cities it does not have too many. There is a bonus associated with choosing Hannover, you receive +1 credit rating. Prussia: This is eastern Germany, and it consists of large swaths of land and many cities. Berlin, Danzig, and a multitude of other towns exist here, and it also has outlying lands that you have to buy to and build through before you can utilize them. There is a penalty for choosing Prussia to equalize, that overhead costs will be +30%. This scenario also existed in Railroad Tycoon 2, and connecting to the various states sometimes also unlocked small bonuses. If someone would like to submit them, I would gladly accept, but this will remain unfinished until I redo this scenario once again. To start, decide which of the three states will be your home base, so to speak. Once you do so, start hooking up cities in your home area! Don't worry if you can only build a small amount of track, because all that you need to do is have a few loads go over it and you'll be making decent money. Just make sure that you're moving all the cargo that is *profitable* to move, and that your trains are running either with three or four cars. Locomotive power in this scenario is cheap for the most part, you just have to make sure that you have enough maintenance facilities to keep your engines going. Also, IMPORTANTLY, make sure to invest in your company as soon as possible and as heavily as is prudent. Don't be afraid to use your company to buy back their own stock too, because dividend profits will be important near the end of the scenario too. Getting to $15M may be the harder goal in this scenario, and unless you start early and well you will have a very tough time accomplishing it. A year or so into the scenario, you will receive an offer from bankers that if you make $500k in industry profit, they will assist in underwriting other business ventures. $500k is not a lot of money, and can be accomplished in two years with a hooked-up production facility (factory) or two to three well-transported supply facilities (farms). Also, don't forget that tool-and-die factories will take iron! The bonus is pretty good to provide new and good profits, as long as you keep a close eye on the facilities you build. While decent money can be made through industry, your largest amounts of profit will be made by connecting all your towns. Make sure to connect any town that has even four houses to your network, and by all means if an industry is oversupplied (like wool, or lumber, etc) then you can use the smaller towns to build facilities so that more demand is created. Just make sure to try to connect as many towns as you can and to make sure that they are being serviced by your trains efficiently. When you're at the point that you can start pulling $500-$800k per year in profit, it's time to do three things - invest more money in your company, set your dividend to start pulling at least $50K or so per year in free money, and (unless there are still better opportunities in your home state) start planning your access rights purchases! When you go into the access rights screen, you will see exactly how many different places you will have to buy into. No territory will offer access rights lesser than $600k (Olmstead) and some will be as high as $2M (Baden, for instance). Taking a rough average of about $1.2M per territory, that leads to needing about $14.4M just to buy into twelve of the thirteen gold-required territories in the game. And, you also have to buy into at least one of the two German premier territories remaining. The premier territories are Prussia, Bavaria, or Hannover as discussed above, and each carries a $10M price tag. This means that your railroad has to be equipped to pay out almost $25M in money that is a sunk cost. On the other hand, paying out $10M to get into one of the other two premier territories will give you access to a LOT of new cities and new revenue opportunities too. Also of note, about five to ten years into the scenario, your *character* is given $500k of money toward personal wealth. By all means, use this money to invest! Just remember, due to Olmstead's position, that you have a choice to make. You can either choose to start in Hannover to make sure you can buy into Olmstead, or if you start in either Bavaria or Prussia you can either choose Hannover as the $10M territory to buy into in order to connect Olmstead OR you have to buy into both other $10M territories if you want to obtain a gold medal in the scenario. It's not impossible, you can certainly obtain $10M of profit by buying into any of the premier territories, but also keep in mind the time limits! That's all there is to it. You can attempt a couple different methods to getting the $15M in personal profit, but your best opportunities to accomplishing both goals include building a railroad company that has at least fifty to seventy trains toward the end and is highly profitable. The gold medal requirements for $15M will trip at the end of any month, if I remember correctly, and there are ways to artificially pump up stock prices such as company stock buybacks, resetting higher dividends, and even good ol' fashioned mass purchases of stock. Don't get too fancy though, because if you're margin-called it's really hard to get back; selling stock in your company will just make the remainder of what you hold less valuable too, and it could make you tumble all the way from $5M to $5.00 in a very short period of time. (And this would make all your efforts in building a powerful company completely moot.) As a final addendum, I realized that I did not provide the method by which I earned gold both times. I started in Hannover, as the cities are a bit closer and the bonus is helpful to begin with. I connected Hannover to Salzgitter and Gottingen and floated a bond to get up to Bremen and Bremerhaven. At that point I had perhaps ten trains running. I did decide to go for some industry profit and invested in a textile mill in Hannover, which I promptly expanded due to all of the wool supply in the area. At that point, I was making enough to expand into Olmstead, and still took full advantage of the cheaper bond rates. Following that, I bought into Schleswig-Holstein to be able to connect Hamburg and Kiel, and went up through Flensburg to connect the smaller cities to the north. I doubled back and went farther east to then connect Lubeck and Rostock. I connected northern Germany because access prices tended to be cheaper here and the cities were more plentiful, and as well the grades were far lower. Following this, I turned my attention southward and connected to Kessel, went south to Frankfurt and west to Koblenz. After that, I connected to Erfurt and Jena as well as to Leipzig. Following that, I went southward to Baden and Strassberg. After connecting all the smaller states, I made a splash and bought into Prussia so that I could extend my northeast track into Berlin. This finished the thir- teen territories I needed to buy into and connect. Don't forget to buy LOTS of trains, and also to improve the track as you go with water towers and maintenance sheds. I was able to pull a profit around $3M per year by the end of this scenario. Also of note is that when I finally finished with all the connections, my personal net worth was sitting at about $8.5M. Because my company was so profitable and had a good dividend set, I artificially boosted my stock price by buying into my stock toward the end of a November, if I recall. I bought in enough to raise the stock price to the point that my holdings were worth $16.5M, and when the month turned I found that the price did go down but still left me with $15.75M. This was more than enough for the gold, since all of the other restrictions were met. The lesson to take from this is twofold: if you buy in heavily to your stock to drive up your personal net worth, it WILL work for limited times. Also, make sure that there is an extremely healthy gap between your final net worth and the net worth you need. If the value fell below $15M, then I would have to hold the stock for a full month. I may have been in trouble due to possible market recorrection. Lastly, the cheating way is to make sure to SAVE before you do a buy-in of this magnitude, so that way you can reload and readjust the strategy if needed. From contributor James Summers: If you ever look at any farm or orchard or dairy, they are ALWAYS profitable, so buying them gives a 100% guaranteed cash flow. The key was to use all of your capital and simply buy farms and other profitable businesses, and not bother building trains for the first 5-10 years. One can get a rough return on investment percentage by comparing the asking price to the last year's earnings. If it is more than your current cost of capital, buy it. The problem with running trains early in the game is that you have to pay for maintenance on track and stations, and so forth. The real trick is to issue as much debt as possible in boom times when the capital is cheap. I always ended up maxing out my debt long before the end of the game. Another trick is to issue stock in boom times, and buy it back in busts. I generally do about one stock buy back per year in down turns and two stock issues in boom times. Sell high, buy low is not exactly a "new" trick though. 5.1.7 - Scenario 7 - The Flying Scotsman Bronze Medal: Connect London to Edinburgh by 1865. Silver Medal: Bronze plus Lifetime average locomotive speed greater than 12MPH. Gold Medal: Silver plus be the only railroad in business. Time Frame (Time Limit): January 1840 to December 1865 (25 years) Starting Position: $100k of personal net worth. Restrictions: Can only start one company. To start, fully capitalize your operation. The initial investment is worth receiving, and while it will be important for your character to have a good net worth it is something that can be built towards. My path took me from London to Cambridge to Northampton, then Bir- mingham. Following that, going south to Portsmouth is best. After that, connect various towns (Ipswitch), through Dorchester and Exeter. Then, connect the headwaters of the Thames (Oxford, Bath, Gloucester). When the other two railroads start up, make sure that your character is able to buy into them without too many problems. Keep it orderly so that nothing strange happens. In my game, one of the two railroads had a very aggressive buyback on their stocks, so therefore if you don't get in soon enough and hard enough it may be exceedingly diffi- cult to perform a merger. Therefore, start using your personal wealth and also your dividend to start owning pieces of the other companies with an eye to purchasing them. Of course, it may also happen that at least one of the two railroads will be barely solvent too. Don't worry if you have to start with Planets or Adlers. The game will offer Beuth engines after a while, and all you have to do is just replace the slower engines with the Beuths. You will also have the chance and money to double-track roads which have very high traffic, so by all means provide the double-track. If your Planets or Adlers gave you a bad speed through the first five to ten years, as long as your speed is at least nine you should be able to raise it enough and in time once the Beuths arrive. At this time, you should be getting at least $500k to $800k profit yearly. Connect Ireland together from Belfast through Dundalk to Dub- lin. (Mind the hill here, make a sharp turn). Go through to Wexford when you can afford it. Ireland is a good place to make additional profit without a high cost. From here, feel free to connect the northern parts of England. Leeds to Kingston-upon-Hull, then north to at least Middlesbrough. Then connect Scotland up; Glascow to Edinburgh first, then add Ayr and Dundee. The northern parts can provide a decent profit, and can be connected to each other easily. Following this, make sure that you can buy out the railroad(s) which might still be remaining. Likely, one will be Liverpool to Manchester, and it is highly doubtful if they expanded due to your claiming Birmingham almost immediately. Just buy them out, connect the two ends, and sit back and enjoy. For reference, passengers are rather lucrative on this map. There is an event which happens early on which will be a famine. You can choose though to provide your food at regular cost. I think that this means that at (grain, corn, livestock, dairy) farms and orchards you own that you will charge less than if you chose no. It does seem to be worth the money, because unless you make a major capital investment quickly in the game, you will likely not have any food farms. I am unaware if this also applies to meat or alcohol. Anyway, the rate at which you choose to lower your food costs will be repaid back a few years later in an increase to passengers at the same rate. It may be a good idea for you to decide exactly how you are planning to make your money, but I do believe that the passenger bonus you receive later is more than enough reason to cut food costs; the infrastructure you should have set up for this increase in passen- gers should be far better than the one you had to begin with for in- creased food. 5.1.8 - Scenario 8 - Crossing the Alps Bronze Medal: Connect Milan to Zurich by 1910 Silver Medal: Connect Milan to Zurich, Munich, and Venice before 1910. Gold Medal: Connect Milan to Zurich, Munich, and Venice before 1910, haul 30 loads of weapons to Munich. Time Frame (Time Limit): January 1875 to December 1910 (35 years) Starting Position: $100k of personal net value. Restrictions: Cannot build unconnected track. This map may require a bit of thinking about, as you need to be able to not only carve out a respectable profit in Italy, but you also need to be able to translate that to a lot of track (or TUNNEL) build- ing. You are given access to Italy first, but you have to gain access to the remainder of the map. Thankfully, Italy is pretty lucrative. Venice to Verona is almost always a good route, and connecting Milan and Trieste will help too. I was able to buy a couple facilities which also made a decent profit. One of the best things is that Venice's port will import weapons in, and these weapons will fetch a higher price in Verona. According to what you may think, it seems to be better to accomplish bronze, then silver, then gold in many scenarios. For this scenario, it may be far better to accomplish silver and gold before worrying about bronze. Going north from Verona will be a direct path to Munich but not to Zurich, but it really is the best path. Trento and Bolzano may be small, but they are cities nonetheless. In my games, I found out that they also will take weapons at an even higher demand than Verona. Amazingly enough, the price for weapons at Munich is such a high pull that the Tycoonatrons will attempt to make the rest of the distance. Therefore, the next best step is to buy into Austria and then to Germany to finish the connection to Munich. If you are able to wait until March 1889, you will receive a pretty decent benefit: tunnel building decreases by 15% (due to invention of cordite). Your tunnel will still probably cost about $2.4M or so, but it is such a nice way to finish off the mountain track-building and it will make getting trains to Munich that much easier. When you can start running trains to Munich, you will get major pro- fits. Your first train will likely be worth at least $750k and may even be worth all the way to $1.1M, so it really is in your best in- terest to get it all the way to Munich as quickly as possible. The gold medal restrictions are the best way for you to finish the map by finishing your bronze medal restrictions. By the time you transport all the weapons you'll need, you should have enough money to transverse the mostly flat land between Munich and Switzerland, and the vague small hills you'll encounter when you get there. It's far cheaper to build from Munich to Zurich, and far more lucrative to get to Munich first. The game will not care if you did not build a direct connection between Milan and Zurich, after all. Just remember to pause the game before laying track, and the "undo" button is definitely your best friend in this scenario. 5.1.9 - Scenario 9 - The Third Republic: Bronze Medal: Company book value of $10M by 1896 Silver Medal: Company book value of $15M and total industry profit of $2M by 1896 Gold Medal: Company book value of $25M, total industry profit of $5M, and be wealthiest tycoon by 1896 Time Frame (Time Limit): January 1871 to December 1896 (25 years) Starting Position: $100k of personal net worth. Restrictions: Cannot merge, cannot start a new company. Unmentioned Restrictions: Cannot short sell, cannot buy stock on margin. You will be at a bit greater odds in this game. Your character will only start with $100k compared to the other three characters' $250k. Or at least you may think you're at a disadvantage. Read on to find out! For my game, I started by connecting Paris to Chartres. Do not worry if you have to fully capitalize and also take out bonds, or even issue more stock. Chartres is the start of the French meat market, and Paris should reciprocate with either grain or alcohol (depending on what is available). Besides, the best reason to connect Paris to Chartres is to also deny the computer two of the best towns for them to start rail- roads in. The next natural two towns to connect to is Orleans and Le Mans. Remember that if a better opportunity exists to buy an industry (perhaps a brewery), check it out, especially because of the restric- tions for gold. For the stock market, make sure that you're balanced. While invest- ing in your own company will make you the best profit to begin with, at least try to get a couple thousand shares of competitor's stock just in case the stock market gets all goofy. Once your profits start to be decent (maybe $150k range?) set a small dividend and try to maintain it. Don't be too afraid to use stock to obtain money for growth in the beginning, but you should be able to buy bonds from about the seventh year onward. In August of 1871, you will receive an offer to reduce fuel costs by 45% while absorbing a 25% increase in engine cost. Most of your engines are not efficient in this game, so my suggestion is to take the offer. It will really start to shine once you get about twenty engines or so and you've been operating them for a couple years. In January of 1872, you will receive an offer to receive a $500k payment, essentially a letter of credit, for $700k to be paid in three years. As your bond market will still be rather bad, I would suggest obtaining this money because seed money is extremely important in this game. Besides, the $700k which will be taken out does not actually require your company have $700k for it to pay back; it will just deduct whatever number you have by $700k, even if it is negative already. About 1875 or so, France will announce a bonus for shipping the most freight. This includes passengers or cargo, for your information. The prize is $50k in *personal* net worth directly to the chairman. Through this method, the game will rapidly become unfair. I have been able to keep pace with tycoons purely with the $50k bonus without even having stock in the stock market to appreciate in value. Unlike other games, do NOT bother connecting opponent's track to your own. This will usually help their own companies more than it will help your own, and since they start with an advantage anyway you may as well just build your own stations. The method to your operations shouldn't be too difficult. As you see, you need both a good company book value as well as a good indus- try profit. So the best idea is to purchase industries which may not be doing as well to maximize their production. If you're getting stuck on industry profits towards the end, there is usually a steel mill near or at Angers that is just lacking iron. (Coal should come through the nearby ports.) Run a track south through Lyons and into Marseilles area, where you can find a ton of cheap iron. Before the iron gets to Angers, buy the steel mill. The profits that you can make from the steel mill can be reinvested to any tool and die shops you may be able to locate and supply. 5.1.10 - Scenario 10 - Orient Express: Bronze Medal: Connect Vienna to Istanbul Silver Medal: Connect Vienna to Istanbul, average express speed of 20 MPH. Gold Medal: Connect Vienna to Istanbul, average express speed of 30 MPH, personal net worth $15M Time Frame (Time Limit) January 1878 - January 1913 (35 years) Starting Position: $100k of personal wealth. Oh, and let's not forget... difficulty: very hard. You'll see why. I know that I'm not the only person who has had a problem trying to get gold in this scenario, and I have tried it so many times and could tell you of so many different starting positions. But I learned more than a few techniques which may work for you for this scenario, and hopefully you will be able to get a gold medal too! The map you are given is a rather sprawling map and the Carpathian Mountains will be a major hurdle depending on the path you take. Vi- enna is in the upper left-hand portion of the map looking from the south while Istanbul occupies the lower right-hand portion. Therefore, just to earn a medal you have to figure out a way to lay track enough to cross this whole map. Additionally, when you start a company, you are given access rights only for Austria-Hungary. This is a rich territory, and because of the number of towns plus the number of larger cities it is the best start you can hope for. Unfortunately, you will also find out that the re- maining territories are extremely expensive with only one trifling exception. Romania and Bosnia carry $1M pricetags, Bulgaria charges $3M for access, Serbia's price is $3M, and the Ottoman Empire requires a whopping $5M to build track and run trains. That's some heavy money there! Your personal net worth will also be a major issue if gold is your goal. You can engage in dirty tricks, like starting new companies and other things, but overall you have to make sure that your company turns a good profit and that the stock is well-valued because starting slow in this map will not be wise. The last trick of this scenario is the insane requirement to move express cargo at 30MPH or greater for gold. Earning a 20 is fairly simple and something that I have done numerous times, but earning a 30 requires major planning and also more than a bit of luck; a broken- down Stirling can KILL your average. Therefore, my advice to you is to save often. Get into the habit of saving at least once every twelve months or so. This scenario takes a lot of effort to do and requires you to make many decisions correctly. Saving will enable you to not lose all of the time you spent in trying to get to the position you currently occupy. It may seem to be dishonest if you restart after a train of yours en- counters a breakdown or crash; however, I will not exaggerate when I say that if you get more than a few breakdowns or crashes on the wrong trains that you will lose any shot you may have at the gold due to the scenario's extremely tough restrictions. Bad decisions will submarine you extremely quickly too, and so will ignoring your personal net worth. Now that the facts are laid before you, feel free to check out the map. Actually, analyze it closely. You need to have a plan in order to make money at the beginning, and this plan has to be more concrete than "build track between two towns". This map is NOT lucrative for cargo or passenger traffic in and of itself, and you have to make a good profitable start in order to make it to the end. Besides, you al- so need to know the lay of the land in order to take the best possible advantage of the bonuses that you will receive, outlined below. In practically EVERY game, Vienna will have at least one distillery and possibly even two. Check out to see if there are any orchards near Vienna which may create a lucrative produce cargo route and could turn an investment into the distillery into a moneymaking venture. Alternatively, Gyor sometimes has either a brewery or a meat-packing plant. If this is the case, find out if they are being supplied. If so, then you may find a good cargo route from Vienna to Gyor. You may also find possible investment route in buying either the local supplies of grain or livestock and supplying them even more closely, or the pro- duction facilities after floating a bond or two. You may also find a paper mill in Szombathely. If Vienna has two warehouses supplying one pulpwood per year, you may be able to supply the paper mill in Szombathely sufficiently enough to make a profit. At the very least, the shipping route is very easy -- Vienna to Szombath- ely, freight cars only, and should be profitable regardless. To give an idea, the paper mill may run $550k, the distillery $850k, and the meat packing plant $1M as well as the brewery $1.4M. These prices represent a discount as unless the facility has been around for a long time, it probably has not had time to build a profit. If the facility is also not connected to another town via track, the prices may be depressed due the local market being oversupplied. The Tycoona- trons around here are *brutally* efficient at shipping goods for the most part though, so just be wary and check the globe icon. Therefore, figure out what might be the best path for you, as there are a LOT of bonuses to choose from when you start your company. You have to make your first choice of category right when you create your company, so knowing which bonus you want immediately may be best. The bonuses are: Science and Technology: 1. Improved Locomotive Speed: Engine Speed +25% (Example: Stirling top speed 94MPH instead of 75MPH) 2. Improved Locomotive Load Pulling: Load pulling capacity +30% (Example: a Stirling with six cars at 0% = 71MPH instead of 44MPH) Business and Finance: 1. Stocks and Bonds: Instant AAA credit rating, $500k company cash. (Please note that your rating will fall within two months or so) 2. New Businesses and Speculation: Fuel costs -25%, new engine costs -20% Industry and Construction: 1. Industry Building and purchasing costs of industries -30% (Example: Vienna's distillery may cost $595k instead of $850k) 2. Construction Building track and stations -20% Arts and Politics: 1. Artistic "Merger premiums" are 50% less, company overhead -20%, passenger building revenues +15% (hotels, restaurants, taverns) 2. Influential Access rights costs -75% That's a lot of different bonuses, and I can hopefully give you a good idea of how they could help you in the map in specific instances. Firstly, the speed and load-pulling bonuses should be recognizably useful. Load-pulling would be more useful if you buy less trains and also if you have a very hilly track, whereas speed can move less cargo quicker. The difference is kind of like this: the average of three cars pulled on a Stirling with +25% speed would be maybe 40 whereas six cars pulled on a Stirling with +30% load capacity could be 35. The only problem with load capacity is that I can't see where you could even have that many passenger cars pulled on one train, and you can just buy Consolidations for cargo anyway. So my opinion would be to lean toward speed if that is your goal. The business bonuses are also rather straightforward. The $500k/AAA bond rating could be rather useful if you need a large infusion of cash. This can get your railroad connected all the way from Vienna to either Budapest or to Zagreb, which could theoretically give you a good start. I found out though through repeated playings that just having a lot of track even at the beginning is no guarantee of future success; if you use the cash infusion unwisely, you will still lose the game. Make sure that whatever you do with your cash that you will be making a good profit. The money could also be used to buy a larger facility, such as a steel mill or other major production, but there may be a better way to do that listed below. The fuel and train engine bonus would not help quite as much in the short-term as a beginning prospect. This bonus would be best to use if you have a good starting position; for instance, a lot of orchards just a short way from Vienna, where you can buy a distillery and make pro- duce shipments in order to earn money quickly. When you have thirty to forty trains, you are essentially getting six to eight engines free with the discount, and the fuel costs will be helped downward. This is one of the better long-term bonuses, though there are other good ones too. For industry and construction, the industrial bonus is very helpful. To put this in perspective, you can build a steel mill for $2.7M and a tool and die shop for $1.5M. Normally, this would cost you a total of $4.2M, and require you to offer nine total bonds if you needed the money immediately. On the other hand, with a 30% discount, you can purchase the same two facilities for the grand total price of $2.94M, which is a sizable discount, and is ironically enough the EXACT amount of money you receive from issuing six bonds. I took this example of a steel mill and a tool and die factory be- cause you can turn one unit of coal and one unit of iron into two units of steel in the mill, and next produce two units of goods at your tool and die factory. One unit of iron plus one unit of coal could cost anywhere from $60 to $110 depending on demand. Two units of steel sell for a rough total of $350, and two units of goods sell for roughly $700 total. So between your steel mill and your tool and die, you could be making over $550 all the way up to $640 per every two units of iron and coal. Not to mention that your steel mill produces 10 units of steel per year. It's a very lucrative vector in this map and it bears very close examination. By the way, six bonds at an aggregate 12% would mean interest pay- ments of $360 yearly. A well-supplied steel mill usually runs at a profit of about $600k to $700k alone, and the tool and die can make an extra $300k or so per year. As long as the steel is getting bought and shipped by either you or the Tycoonatrons, it is a very worthy invest- ment due to how cheap iron and coal are in this map. Anyway, back to the bonuses. Construction would not be a bad idea either, as you have to build all the way from one side of the map to the other. Just make sure that if you choose this bonus that you need to be able to make good decisions about where you put your track. For "Artistic", this is the one bonus which seems most useless. I was able to earn a gold medal in this map without even merging once, and merging takes resources that you could use to either enrich your- self for the $15M personal net worth or for the amazingly high access prices for territories. Additionally, the 15% revenue earned from passenger buildings such as hotels, restaurants, and taverns is miti- gated highly because of the restrictions of the map; if you run too many passenger trains you run the risk of going underneath 30MPH due to congestion and breakdowns. The only thing that may make this option worthwhile is the -20% overhead, but this is definitely of long-term benefit rather than short-term, so if you need help at the beginning don't bother with this option. For "Influential"... well, it rocks. -75% access rights are HUGE. A full access rights discussion is below, but the gross savings for territories you just NEED for this scenario would be $6M alone. You could make this work for you for over $9M of savings, which is not a small amount, plus the fact that if you are able to buy into terri- tories sooner you can grow them much quicker, and they would be more lucrative for you. Therefore, I will attempt to rank these bonuses for long-term suc- cess. If there are issues you may have with your starting position in your map, then you may want to adjust your strategy accordingly -- or just ask for a map reload. My choices for best bonuses: 1. -30% industry investment OR -75% access rights costs 2. Engine Speed +25% 3. Fuel costs -25%, train purchasing -20%. You really can't go wrong with either the industry investment or the access rights, I think. It just means that you have to adjust your strategies accordingly. The industry investment I value a bit higher though because they can come into play much quicker and give you a lar- ger bonus earlier. Don't underestimate the money you might make if you are able to access territories far sooner though, as Bucharest and Con- stanta can be absolute gold mines if you get to them early enough. If you are horribly concerned with your train speed, feel free to pick option #2. Just be warned though that I have a method below that you can get off to a good start carrying passengers in this map with just Stirlings, and the scenario can offer two trains that are far better than the Stirling at later points in the map. Don't worry if you think you botched your bonus... now that I know what all of the bonuses are, I would not have attempted the map with the fuel cost -25% / train purchasing -20% bonus but I was able to earn a gold medal with this bonus regardless. Therefore, start! Right when you organize your company you will be expected to choose one of the four paths above. Armed with the infor- mation above, you'll know which one will work for you best. For some reason, the -20% track building bonus does not become available until December of the first year, while the rest of the bonuses come avail- able within one or two months following your final choice. In starting your company, I could not imagine starting with less than full capitalization ($1M added to your personal $100k for a starting investment). There are just way too many needs for your money, and the company as well as your character can perform stock buybacks (or buy- ins) as things go better. Even if you feel that you capitalized too much in the beginning, you can always use some of the excess to buy back stock. In the early going, you can set up routes to first move passengers and then to move cargo, or just to move cargo. I have a strategy out- lined below for moving passengers but it is also dependent on your a- bility to purchase trains to dedicate to passenger traffic. In the beginning, especially if you decide to partake in industry investment, you may not be able to dedicate these trains. For my gold-medal game, I found that Vienna was just north of a ser- ies of five orchards that were also east of Szombathely. Therefore, I bought the distillery in Vienna for $850k, floated a bond, built a large station in Vienna and then a medium station in the orchards which captured four out of the five buildings. Then I just shipped fruit to vienna to begin with. This provided my railroad with a profit of about $300k in the first year between modest freight returns on fruit and good returns on my new distillery. Following this, I floated a bond to connect to Szombathely proper and then to connect to Bratislava and to Zalaegerszeg. An alternate likely strategy requires Szombathely to have a paper mill. In every game that I have started, Vienna had at least one ware- house which provided 1 unit of pulpwood per year. This pulpwood can be shipped to Szombathely to a decent profit, and hopefully Vienna is pro- ducing enough pulpwood to keep the mill running and hopefully profit- able. The paper mill should be around $550k to purchase. At this point, I pursued passenger traffic, and came up with the this strategy: Passengers and mail at normal difficulty in the Vienna/Bratislava/ Zagreb/Budapest area fetch about $20k per load. Keeping a track speed of greater than thirty miles per hour requires you to not only buy Stirlings, as nothing else will possibly match the speed, but you can- not overload them. Passenger trains also have to be scheduled very del- icately, as time spent either at the maintenance shed or at the water tower with passengers is time spent at zero miles per hour. Any break- down or crash will decimate your averages to boot. Therefore, the rules for passenger trains are as follows: 1) ALWAYS add a caboose to any express loads for the 50% reliability bonus. 2) ALWAYS make sure your flags are set to "express" (green arrow) for any passenger trains. 3) When your Stirling either gets to twelve years old, or starts to show a breakdown percentage above 40%, it is time to move this Stirling to either cargo duty OR to retire it. 4) Alternately, make sure that none of the rest of your fleet of trains has a breakdown percentage above 60%. These trains will block your tracks and they will stop your expresses if you have the mis- fortune of having your older trains break down in front of your ex- presses. 5) Therefore, also build sufficient maintenance sheds. 6) Double-track as many passenger routes as economically possible. 7) Make sure that the track is as flat as you can make it and as straight as you can make it; curves can cut speed just like mountains. 8) As mentioned above, save often. That's a lot of hassle for passenger routes already, isn't it? Guess what, there's also more. The above rules will keep you to a silver- medal level, above 20MPH comfortably. In order to achieve gold-medal service, you also have to learn how to schedule your trains. Here's my recommendation for station scheduling from vienna to Bratislava (short-length passenger routes): 1. City 1 (3 Express + Caboose) 2. City 2 (3 Express + Caboose) 3. City 1 (0 Cars) 4. Maintenance Shed (0 cars, caboose optional) 5. Water Tower (0 Cars, caboose optional) Longer routes, such as Vienna to Zagreb, may look like this: 1. City 1 (3 Express + Caboose) 2. City 2 (0 Cars) 3. Mainenance Shed near City 2 (0 cars) 4. Water Tower near City 2 (0 cars) 5. City 2 (3 Express + Caboose) 6. City 1 (0 Cars) 7. Maintenance Shed near City 1 [0 cars, caboose optional] 8. Water Tower near City 1 (0 Cars, caboose optional) On longer routes, you will have to face the fact that your trains will need to have stops along the way, with passengers, at water tow- ers. It is unavoidable. But if you can cut these stops to the minimum you can still keep an above-30MPH speed, especially if you are able to send trains with express as close to 100% watered as possible. In the Coast to Coast expansion, you can press Ctrl + right click on the mouse at the same time in order to add a required service tower stop or a required maintenance shed stop. If you need to insert a scheduled maintenace stop, then Ctrl + Shift + right click will work. Feel free to repeat any of the above as well. The point here is that you're trying to get your trains to be maintained WITHOUT passengers waiting and even refilled with water and sand WITHOUT passengers wait- ing. In the early going, before newer and better trains can be found (see the sections on the Orca and the 2-D-2 below), this is the only way to keep your speeds above 30MPH, and this schedule will NOT pre- serve your speed from multiple train breakdowns. One suggestion is to save your game and run your engine with a caboose and a dining car to get a rough estimate of how far it can go on one refill of water. Once you find out, you can restart your game and you have the proper information, and you can also restart if you realize that adjustments need to be made. The estimates above were tested in my own game, and the number of passenger routes was kept to possibly four total through about 1895. You HAVE to run a passenger train at least once though, as you need to have at least one load of passengers or mail move faster than 30MPH in order to satisfy the average speed restriction. If you avoid ex- press traffic altogether, your average speed will be zero. Personal net worth is one of the gold-medal restrictions too, so make sure that it's not ignored as you go forward. In my own personal walkthrough, my next connection was to Varazdin. If a computer tycoon has built into Varazdin, they will typically own a small and bad company which has connected only Varazdin to Zagreb. Connect to his track anyhow and feel free to still go forward with the next plan below. At Varazdin, industries may be a bit different. If Zagreb is getting wool and has a textile mill, then clothing will be available. Clothing is a decent cargo and you can get some profits from it. Likely, there will be at least one iron mine around Zagreb as well as one coal mine. Additionally, there will also likely be a meat packing plant in Zagreb or Varazdin, or even a logging camp or two. Therefore, you have a lot of options as far as industry investment goes. You can attempt to buy into one of the profitable companies provided the cost is not too high (even BEFORE you get into Varazdin), you may find a supply such as a cattle or dairy farm that you could invest in, or you could even build your own facility. The prices below are for self-built facilities, without the 30% bonus you may have chosen: Paper Mill: $900k Lumber Mill: $1.5M Meat Packaging Plant: $1.5M Steel Mill: $2.7M (Tool & Die: $1.5M) Don't let the steel mill scare you off; even if you're not quite connected to a town which demands steel, a tool and die does not cost that much extra. Besides, look at the costs; one coal plus one iron could possibly equal $90 while TWO steel will likely equal $340, which means that the first step will be $250 of revenue with the mill (and the limit is 10 per year, which is not a small amount.) Then if it is transformed by the tool and die, one goes from about $190 (the demanded cost will be greater, remember, but you will hopefully make the profit by hauling it in YOUR trains) to around $330. A tool and die will only process three steel per year without an upgrade, but it will still make a tidy profit. Most importantly, because the Tycoonatrons abound in this map in Western Austria, most prices do NOT fluctuate and the ones that do fluctuate only do so by a possible maximum of 5%. Make sure that if you do buy a steel mill that there are enough buyers for your product. You may be looking at your mill and seeing that it produces 10 or 11 units of steel per year, and therefore earn- ing a large profit for the time being. But if the local tool and die facilities all fill up with enough steel, then you will have to find other buyers to keep your prices up. Goods, on the other hand, have a lot of buyers and it takes a lot of goods in order for the market to move even a bit due to the Tycoonatrons. By all means though, if you can't afford the $2.7M that a steel mill will cost, then either build or buy a lumber mill or a paper mill. Logs will also have an $80-$100 price gap to lumber, and wood pulp may have an even greater price gap to begin with. As far as these two facilities go, the lumber mill produces five units per year while the paper mill handles three. Check your supplies! Don't worry if you are floating a lot of bonds at this point as long as your facilites are profitable. Two 10% bonds will cost $100k in interest, so if you are making more than $100k in profit then the bonds are justifiable. In the early going, floating bonds to purchase well- supplied facilities or well-transported supply commodities is worth the risk as guaranteed income will keep your stock prices high, enable you to set a dividend (albeit small) and keep your credit rating high so that the cost of your capital is cheaper. Of course, you still need to build track to connect Vienna to Istan- bul and you need to get a net worth over $15M. Make sure that your character is buying into your company (and others if they look profit- able) as well as making sure that your company can buy back when it has the chance. Connect into a town when you know that the goods you are producing are demanded in the town. You can find this out by clicking on the station which supplies the goods and click on the good in ques- tion. For instance, clicking on Vienna station and then clicking on the alcohol car will pop up prices for alcohol throughout the map which are in relation to Vienna's price, such as $+3 for Gyor or $-10 for Budapest. You will find very few $+30s, but keep your eyes peeled for the best next town to connect to. Just like your companies need to be profitable, so do your trains. As with other games, there will be a number of special messages pop- ping up throughout. The first is a rather important one about Jules Verne, saying that you need to connect to Zagreb for further informa- tion. When you connect to Zagreb, you will find out that monks in Chisinau can provide you with engineering information, and the price is that Chisinau has to be connected with three loads of beef shipped there. Put that info aside, you can't act on it yet. The next message consists of a Serb national telling you that he wants you to make a statement about their government. The first box is just a box, but the next box comes with a decision. Is it worth redu- cing Serbia's access costs by 50% just to have all of the other terri- tories increase theirs by 30%? My opinion is no, as my strategy in- cludes Romania and Russia, and therefore could also include Bulgaria. As a matter of fact, you may be able to avoid Serbia altogether. So receiving a 50% decrease for Serbia would not be worth the 30% increase for the rest of the territories in my mind. Besides, your savings for Serbia will be $1.5M, but your cost increase to access the Ottoman Em- pire will be increased... you guessed it, $1.5M. Accessing Serbia early does give you the opportunity to connect to Belgrade, but unless you are able to find amazingly good prices for your cargoes in the rest of Serbia, then don't bother. The last message is that you can increase your loading/unloading times by 25% if you increase station maintenance by 25%. As I am al- ways looking for ways to keep my speeds up, I choose yes. Don't worry about the 'clubs being illegal' part, I've never had any consequences. Lotsa stuff, and we've only made it to about six towns so far! The best part is that once you get the above things all straight, your com- pany should be pretty lucrative. It may take until 1890 or so, but re- member Chisinau and the offer of technology? Chisinau is in western Russia and Russia's access costs are only $100k. You should also be able to find a meat packing plant already producing near where Chis- inau is. You do NOT have to connect Chisinau to Vienna or any other track you may have; you can build track anywhere you want in this map! If a nearby city has the beef Chisinau needs, then your costs for this may be about $600k or so (for access rights, two stations, rail, and a train). Chisinau IS a revelation, as the monks will not only increase your engine speeds 15% across the board but they will also give you access to the Orca. It's an engine that seriously looks like a killer whale (or orca, really) and it moves FAST. It's also cheaper than a Stirling as well, at only $100k per engine. It can take four cars at 120MPH as well as take hills relatively decently. If you're under 30MPH for your speed, changing out all of your express engines with Orcas should raise your speed above 30MPH without too many problems. If, however, you are under 25MPH for average speed, you will likely have a problem in rais- sing your average, especially if you've already hauled around 50 or so express cars. The Orca is even cheaper than your Consolidations, so you may find advantage in retiring your Consolidation trains as well. The Orca will also enable you to allow for less trains on your track as they are so fast that using them for cargo routes may drain all of the available cargoes in certain locations. Once you have Russia finished for the time being, you can focus on either more of Russia (as there are more than a few towns in the Chis- inau area) or you can refocus your attention on Austria. My suggestion at this point is to at *least* double-track what you can and also to even give some thought to electrifying if given the option. Refinance any bonds you can as well, as 7% is far better than even 11% and the refinance fee is only $20k - which is made up in only one year for re- financing for at least 4% less. Pay attention to your net worth too! If you forget about this, all of the other instructions above will be useless, and getting that $15M in net worth is not easy on this scenario! If you haven't built a steel mill yet, you may want to give good thought to doing so soon. Of course, Belgrade has a steel mill, and so does Chernivsti, but Chernivsti is on the wrong side of the Carpa- thians. If your coal and iron sources are close why bother spending all the money to buy into Serbia ($3M, more expensive than building) or laying track all the way through the mountains in the northeast? Zag- reb is a favorable place for a steel mill, and you should be clearing $600k to $700k yearly on a non-upgraded steel mill if it is fully sup- plied. My experience is that the steel mill may not be immediately supplied however, so just be patient with it as prices realign. You should be able to find a *cheap* tool and die plant due to the fact that they are all money-losers without steel; when you start supplying steel to the town with the tool and die, feel free to buy the tool and dye; it shouldn't cost much more than $1M if it is an established buil- ding or $1.5M if you have to build one. It may require yet more bonds so hopefully your credit can take the hit. To offer an illustration of my company's health, at about 1888 or so I built my steel mill in Zagreb. I had saved about $800k or so, and therefore needed four bonds in order to purchase the mill. The four bonds I issued were added to the four bonds I already possessed, and I had a total long-term debt liability of $40M, of which I was paying about 10.3% total interest. This works out to about $412k per year in interest payments. I can definitely tell you though that the steel mill alone was able to cover this interest and also to give me a profit on my liabilities, which makes the steel mill a very useful building to have. The major conclusion to take from the above illustration is that it is okay to have a large long-term debt as long as you are definitely aware of and can handle the interest payments. The scenario lasts for thirty-five years, which means that older bonds will come up for repay- ment, but since those will likely have the highest interest rates you will probably pay them off first regardless. Of course, be sure to expand your track as necessary throughout the territories you control, Austria and Russia. I would suggest buying into Romania when you can and hopefully somewhere before 1900, because Constanta and Bucharest are very lucrative towns and these will enable your connections in Russia to become far more lucrative, and obviously provide you more opportunities to invest and earn money. To gain the profits you need in such a short time-frame, you really need to look rigorously at your opportunity costs now; with whatever you do, either by building track or by buying/erecting facilities, can you make a good profit from the investment in a short time? Besides, don't forget about the eastern parts of Austria-Hungary. Use the station dialogue box in towns which have good supplies such as Zagreb and Vienna to find out if connecting eastern Austria is worth the costs. You may not see huge prices throughout, but there's still some time to create production facilities too, and making money through industry can be just as lucrative as expensive train routes. Around 1904 or so, you will have the opportunity to purchase the 2-D-2 electric engine. It's a workhorse, extremely cheap, and the best part is that it's electric; while it may only carry at 70 MPH as the Orca can carry at 120, it also does not have to stop for water, only sand or oil. The 2-D-2 also has better reliability. But the Orca has a better acceleration and definitely outshines with the top speed. Changing over to the 2-D-2 will not give you many more MPH over the Orca. The biggest benefits that I can see from the possible changeover are the fact that the 2-D-2 can handle the frontier better as it does not need as many towers, and it can handle hills better. The only problem is that you have to pay an estimated $3.5M to elec- trify all of your track if it is not electrified already. You will also have to pay attention that any competitor's stations that you are connected to will need to have electric track built to them, and you will have to expend an extra $50k per train (for 20, $1M) to use the benefit. Total cost to you may be all the way to $5M, so it is cer- tainly something to evaluate before you make the decision. On the other hand, your trains may already be getting old anyway and you may need to replace them so that your tracks remain clear. By 1905, you should have a speed of at least 29 MPH as well as a net worth at least reasonably close to $5M in order to succeed. 1905 is about three-quarters through the scenario. You may not have near as much track as you need in order to make all the connections, and you may even need to buy in to at least the Ottoman Empire before you can succeed, but you should also have a yearly profit of at least $2M per year at this point too. Eight additional years at $2M will give you a total of $16M more profit minimum (and that also implies that you are standing pat and not exploring other opportunities). Unlike other scenarios, you really have to try to go all-out through the end of the scenario. If you have a track speed above 30MPH, you may still want to be care- ful about new passenger routes. Your track will probably extend a long way though, so you should see some decent speeds. Additionally, if your speeds are above 33MPH, you can probably let trains take mixed cargoes once again, as I was able to coast through the end of my scen- ario due to the work that I put in by keeping my speeds above 33MPH throughout the scenario. Personal net worth should be taken care of near the end; even if you are at $8M with only months to go, fudging a personal net worth is far easier than fudging the speed restrictions. Company buybacks, dividend resetting, and mass purchases of stock by your personal character can drive the value up to $15M for short periods of time, which is all you need. All of the instructions above are jumbled, but I addressed everything in roughly chronological order, as you need to keep focus on all three restrictions constantly in order to earn gold. It took me about ten tries to get gold, but I was finally able to succeed with time and ef- fort, so I know that you can too. Good luck here! 5.1.11 - Scenario 11 - Argentina: Bronze Medal: Haul 100 loads of meat. Silver Medal: Haul 200 loads of meat, 100 loads of wool, AND have lifetime industry profits of $10M Gold Medal: Haul 350 loads of meat, 200 loads of wool, 100 loads of grain, AND have lifetime industry profits of $25M Time Frame (Time Limit): 1880-1909 (30 years) Special Restrictions: No playing with the stock market! (No resigning, no new companies, no buying/selling stock, no changing dividend) Starting Position: No stations, $1.3M company cash. Oh, Argentina! It's a wide-open map and you can start pretty much anywhere, with the added bonus that your track doesn't have to connect! Of course, one of your two methods of gaining money has been shut down, but in the early going issuing stock is not worth a lot. You can still issue bonds, and your ability to do so is rather important considering the industry profit instructions of the Silver and Gold medal requirements. Very early in the scenario, representatives from Britain, France, and the U.S. will arrive. Each provides a different bonus, and also different trains. British: 30% faster turnaround, fuel costs 25% cheaper British train: Stirling - $140k, top speed at 4 cars, 0%: 63MPH (Accel: Above Avg.) French: Track-laying costs reduced by 20% French trains: Crampton - $100k, top speed at 4 cars, 0%: 52MPH (Accel: Avg.) American: Industry purchasing costs reduced by 25% American Train: Eight-Wheeler - $180K, top speed at 4 cars, 79MPH (Accel: Above Avg.) All sets get: Consolidated - $120K, top speed at 4 cars, 0% grade: 60MPH (Accel: Below Avg.) Shay - $40K, top speed 24MPH Fairlie - $15K, top speek 16MPH The choices may remind you a bit of Railroad Tycoon 2, eh? As far as bonuses go, the U.S. bonus is best. As far as trains go, the US bonus is also best. I was able to play and win this scenario with American assistance. Using the Crampton (France) seems almost useless, as it's slower and less-valuable than the Consolidated anyway, and the Stirling only has a better acceleration to recommend it. Besides, saving over and above $500k at a time buying industries is well worth the assist, especially since that means you can buy industries earlier. To begin with, you should notice what is most important to haul to start. That's right, meat. The highest number of hauled loads for gold will be of meat, so therefore you should find the largest two- star town with a meat packaging plant in it. Before building though. check the meat packaging plant to make sure that it is turning a profit, which means that it's already supplied by the native transportation, and is able to produce beef for you to haul. Most likely, this town with be Rosario, which is down the river from Buenos Aires. (left and central in the map). Having thus found the town, the next thing you should do is make it the center of your rail empire for the time being. Meat is requested by all houses, so don't skip the small towns! The best method to make sure that prices stay high is to connect two small towns to your large town and have one train service all three such as Large Town -- Small Town 1 -- Large Town -- Small Town 2. If cargo is an issue then set the slider bars so that only three loads are departing the large town. This may seem counterproductive at first, but beef usually is in high demand to begin with and you want to try to maximize your profits this early in the game. Once you get two or three of the closest (and likely small) towns hooked up to the beef-producing one, next find the closest two-star or greater city and start laying track to it. Usually, the large cities will have a greater demand for the beef, so don't skimp on the cars this time. Ideally, the large town will be somewhere possibly near a grain farm or a sheep farm too. You may want to check global prices to see that grain and/or wool is demanded, because you still need to turn a profit this early. If you can haul either grain or wool profitably, start doing so. Like the first town, use your trains to service multiple towns to make sure demand doesn't drop, and therefore profits can be maximized. You may also want to check into purchasing the grain farm or sheep farm if you have enough cash. When that is done, the best thing to do is to hook up more small towns. If your beefery is running out of supply, then check the globe for more livestock farms. Best-case would be to find unconnected livestock farms near these towns which could benefit from your transportation - just make a train from the farm station / town directly to the town with the meat packaging plant, and in that one trip you are both supplying the plant with needed material AND hopefully transporting the beef back to the town. And for maximum profit and also to satisfy requirements, buy the livestock farm and watch the money roll in. If you're unsure where cattle (for meat), grain, and wool are then check the globe. Usually the sheep farms are east and south of Buenos Aires, corresponding to the lower and right portions of the small map. Grain farms are almost everywhere, but most prevalent in the northern half of the map--the right-hand portion of the map. Cattle ranches are almost everywhere, and meat can be obtained by purchasing a meat- packaging facility for $2,500K and supplying it. At this point, you still need to make profits, but should have plenty of time left. On this map are multiple industry vectors - grain to brewery for alcohol, wool to textile mill for clothing, pulpwood to paper, logs to lumber mill for lumber which can turn into lumber to furniture factory for furniture or lumber to toy factory for toys, and the ever-popular iron and coal to steel mill for steel to tool and die for goods. Steel mills tend to be the most lucrative, but this map does a very outstanding job of invalidating steel mills - the iron deposits are usually on the left-hand side (which is bizarrely south, IIRC) of the map, and coal is shipped in to ports in the north and east (Buenos Aires and other possible coastal towns). Now also, remember that you're not limited to the buildings set by the computer. Of course, you cannot place supply buildings (though you can buy them)... but you CAN place factory-level buildings. If you cannot find a textile mill in an advantageous spot, build one your- self! The textile mill is $1.3M and the brewery is about $1.5M. You may not make a profit from either facility immediately, but you are creating demand for either wool or grain by placing either a textile mill or a brewery. Additionally, finished goods usually have a higher profit margin than raw materials. And lastly, since the game tends to encourage people to not micromanage, this means that the right cargoes (grain and wool) which usually have a low profit margin are picked up because the profit margin will be higher, so you can keep your trains on "best available" and earn a profit while still working toward the objectives. The best method I found of obtaining gold-medal wealth is to pretty much create a new industry. There are very few textile mills, brewer- ies, distilleries, lumber mills, or paper mills operating to begin with. In order to corner a market, you should first create it. Make sure that your industry has plenty of access to the raw materials it needs, as it will take a major investment -- it will likely be higher than $1M. Give your first industry time for people to realize they need your product. Then try to buy out as many pieces of your industry as possible, such as the raw material suppliers as well as any com- petitors that may spring up. Within about ten years, your conglomerate should be pulling in some pretty good squance. In this map, the best thing to do is to keep adding smaller towns rather than building long lengths of track to bigger cities. Additionally, make sure to double-track as much as possible. The load restrictions will be easy to defeat if your railroad makes lots of short trips rather than a few long trips. However, you may also make more profits from your own goods by hooking up towns with your production facilities with longer runs. Five points for the end game, roughly 1895-1910: 1) If you have a facility in a town and it is oversupplied, by all means expand it if you're still seeing profit across the board. If there are no numbers above $5 for demand of your production cargo though, keep things small. More capacity will cost more and could turn it unprofitable. Additionally, more supply will equal less demand, which can also turn a company unprofitable. 2) When you buy new industries, especially if the raw materials they need are not available in town, by all means supply them immediately. After you supply them, give them about two years maximum to see if they will turn a profit. You cannot have any industries draining your profit pool. If on the other hand it's slightly profitable, keep it and explore other methods to make it more profitable. 3) If you need more income toward the end of the scenario and you have only two or less years left, it may be worth it to buy long- standing cash cow industries, such as the very first meat-packing plant you utilized. You do not have to pay off bonds at the end of the game, and while it may be extremely expensive it is also an immediate addition to overall industry profit with no costs in improving infrastructure (laying new track, building new stations, buying new trains). Just understand that buying an extremely expensive facility should be balanced against the possibility that you could either build a facility elsewhere or purchase a facility elsewhere for less--it will likely need time to be lucrative. Purchasing and selling costs will NOT apply to the end industry profit numbers. 4) Building a second facility in the same town may not be a good idea. This comes about for the same reasons as expanding above - supply increase will lower demand further, and capacity in the form of having to buy a whole-new facility is far more expensive than the upgrade. Previous experience also bears this issue out; it would not surprise me to find out that insufficient labor was the reason that I could not turn a second similar facility in the same town profitable. 5) Fulfilling the requirements of loads hauled may seem daunting. If so, just start shortening your routes. If your map looks like this: Town 1------- Town 2------ Town 3------(3-Star) City and is supplied like this: Town 1 Town 2 Town 3 (3-Star) City (Beef: 5.0) (Beef: 0.2) (Beef:1.1) (Beef:0.0) w/Meat Packing Plant then shorten your routes! The city will drive up prices for beef all the way from their location to the nearest supply, the producing town. So beef will be incrementally more expensive as you go. Bring back your trains if your industry numbers are fine, and reschedule them for super-short routes. What may be a lucrative Town 1 - City route could be three valuable Town 1 - Town 2, Town 2 - Town 3, and Town 3 - City routes. And by shipping this way, you are loading and unloading beef at every stop, which counts to the number you've hauled. This path may be worth 16 loads at the end instead of just 4. And that's why connecting all the goofy little towns is worth the effort in this scenario. 5.1.12 - Scenario 12 - Africa. Bronze Medal: Connect Dodoma to Juba Silver Medal: Connect Dodoma to Juba, $10M company book value Gold Medal: Connect Dodoma to Juba and Nairobi, $35M company book value. Time Frame (Time Limit): Special Restrictions: All track must connect. Starting Position: Some track and one station in Dodoma, $700K The lands of deepest darkest Africa. I hope you remembered to turn your lamp on! In this game, profits are scarce yet laying track is king. The worst part of this game is that you have to either spend money bulldozing your whole setup, or start in Dodoma, at the extreme southern end of the map. The method I used was to start in Dodoma. Almost immediately, you will want to build toward the east. There is a small town there which will buy almost anything Dodoma produces, and is actually a decently lucrative run. Use a Camelback, and for added protection on the return trip to Dodoma use a caboose to maintain your Camelback as much as possible. If you break down in the early going, it will be a major issue and money for maintenance facilities may not arrive for a while. After you connect this first town, keep looking east. The next town is Manyoni, and will give you another place to send the Camelback. Again, use the caboose at least half of the way to keep repairs down and try to maximize whatever profits you can. And farther west will be the two-star Tabora. Before getting to Tabora, you may likely be tapped out of cash. Your profits probably won't be enough for you to keep going. This is where you have to turn to the people of Africa and tell them proudly, "I will be glad to pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today!" The stock market should at least be warmed to your profits, and be sure to tap them for a few thousand. Next, hit the bond market. Try to get to at least BBB rating, but even BB is better than suffering for years. Float the bond, find the cheapest possible way to get to Tabora, and build it! Getting to Tabora will be a revelation. Both times I played this map, Tabora's river (more African geography - the Gombé River) transported the raw materials needed by Manyoni to make their industries run. These industries will pay absolute top dollar for raw materials as well, and you'll be more than happy to cash in! It may take two or three loads, but you'll probably get your whole bond back within possibly one year. Don't pay it off though, expand! From here you have two options. You can build north to Lake Victoria along Tabora's area, or you can start building north and easterly from Dodoma. If you connect to the next town north, the Masai tribesmen will ask for tribute for using their lands. Don't get offended, and just give them cattle. They love cattle, and will give you an additional gift of $150K, which almost offsets the costs of building to this town. From here, you can connect to the east. Also early in the game, wealthy entrepreneurs will offer big bucks for you to build track to Zanzibar. Today's lesson... Zanzibar is on the island of Unguja. And it is separated from Africa by the Strait of Zanzibar. Even with that information, you can see that you're also going to pay out a large amount of money in order to not only lay track to the coast of German West Africa, you're also going to pay about the same amount of money to transverse all that water. The money that they provide may not even offset the money that you would have to lay out to build a connecting station, and remember that water towers and maintenance sheds will be needed for such a long journey. Additionally, this map just does not pay much money out for passengers, so therefore you may as well stay away from Zanzibar. (Complaint: why is Zanzibar in this game, but no Dar es Salaam? Yeesh.) About ten years into the game, you'll find something extremely interesting. Africa, despite having little infrastructure to actually support this improvement in real life, can obtain not only electric tracks but electric trains too. And one little train, the 2-D-2. will be your salvation. It's only $50k per train, it takes hills well, and makes it so that you need FAR fewer water towers (sanding stations) to boot. The rest of the map is rather straightforward once the money starts rolling in from Tabora for raw materials. Again, make sure you're aware that passenger traffic is not your main source of income. As far as completing the requirements for gold, do two branches. One branch from Dodoma going east to Nairobi, and one branch (through Tabora) going west and north all the way to Juba. Always remember that you can satisfy the requirement of "connection" even by building an insanely stupid track between Nairobi and Juba too as long as you already have the $35M book value. 5.1.13 - Scenario 13 - Japan Quakes! Bronze Medal: Supply Niigata with 25 Meat before 1985 Silver Medal: Supply Niigata with 50 Meat and 25 Clothes before 1985 Gold Medal: Supply Niigata with 100 Meat, 50 Clothes before 1985 and have no more than five years of interrupted service between Tokyo, Nagoya, Toyama, and Niigata Time Frame (Time Limit): 1965 - 1985 (21 Years) Starting Position: $2M, tons of track and infrastructure in place, two trains. Special Restrictions: Track limits - 500 to begin, and a possible 50 per year afterward. To begin with, you get a warning saying that there is a big earthquake expected in Japan, and that passengers aren't happy if you run your trains during an earthquake. But the earthquake doesn't happen for a while; schedule your trains as usual, and they should be fine. You may notice something strange in this game if you take a good look before the earthquake: there's a competitor! Wow! Haven't seen one of those in the last two scenarios now! This competitor also has Niigata covered... arrgh! But only a few months into the scenario, the earthquake will hit, and your competitor will be wiped out partially. Aftershocks will happen a month or two afterward, and these aftershocks will finish off your competitor and allow you to build into Niigata, so that you can start to fulfill your insane requirements. Firstly, turn on electric track; the electric trains are mostly best in this game, and all of the rest of your track is electric. Then make sure to build to Niigata as soon as possible, you should have enough money still. Once you do, you may notice that you get an outstanding bonus - for every year you keep the cities in the Gold Medal restriction connected, you get $200k and 50 units more track. Sweet! Even if you did have to float a bond to build the track, you get some of the money back automatically! Now, you have to figure out how to get the beef and clothes. Beef is the biggest obstacle by a 2-1 margin over clothes, so that should be your first focus. The port of Yokosura is south of Tokyo (bottom center) and has a multitude of docks. These docks will be your best friends, because they import both beef and clothes. You can get almost 5.0 units of beef per year just through these docks, so as long as a reliable transport is set up here between both beef and clothes you should hopefully go a long way. For more beef, Shizuoka should have a meat packing plant (Shizuoka is south of Mount Fuji along the coast, roughly lower-center in the map). While there may be track there, Shizuoka is probably not connected with a station. By all means, purchase a station that captures the meat packing plant, it's an easy connection. Your livestock farms are in the northern part of Honshu (the main island), and they are at the far right-hand portion of the map. You can either connect the towns and rely on the Tycoonatrons to ship the livestock to your stations, or you can spend extra money and track to connect the ranches directly to your lines through rail and station. Livestock shipping is decently lucrative in this map, so it may not be a profit- killing idea. If you have additional track and Shizuoka is unable to process all of the livestock, connect Maenobashi to Tokyo by rail (Maenobashi is near the hills west of Tokyo, roughly center-center of the map). This city should also have a meat packing plant. More beef can be found in one last place - Osaka. Osaka's port will convert produce into beef, and Nagoya usually has a good supply of produce. (There will be other locations you can find fruit too if Nagoya is out). Of course, Osaka is a long distance from Niigata, so use this as a last resort, but be sure to hook it up quickly enough (about two years in advance of your needing it) if you feel that it's warranted. And for more clothes, there is one more town you should pay attention to, by the name of Mito. It is north of Tokyo and near the ocean, so it will be about halfway between the center and the left- hand side of the map lengthwise and near the bottom. The warehouses at Mito will supply about 2.0 units of clothes per year, and between this and Yokosura's supply you should be all set. At or around 1972 or so, there will be another earthquake. This earthquake will involve Toyama and its surroundings. After this earthquake, build as soon as possible back to Toyama. Losing the bonus is bad business sense and you need to keep everything connected for gold regardless. Unless this map is tied to some random number generator, this will be the last earthquake for the whole scenario. Concluding notes: 1) Make sure your railway is profitable. Despite the fact that Niigata will have a warehouse demanding 10.0 beef and 5.0 clothes per year, once you get moving Niigata's demands will go down too, to the point that shipping these cargoes may become unprofitable by themselves. I was able to keep some profit moving in my company by doing custom consists of 3.0 cars of the needed commodity (either beef or clothes) and 1.0 car of "any cargo/passengers". Recoup at least some of your fuel and other expenses this way. 2) There's also a trick toward the end as well. Some may call this a "cheat", but as far as I'm concerned it's legal because of the bad design of this scenario and the above complaint. Of course, Niigata will "consume" 10 beef and 5 clothes per year according to the warehouse. BUT, just like all other industries in this game, this consumption takes time. If you manage to get 50 loads of beef to Niigata, you may find yourself shipping beef AWAY from Niigata. And here's the kicker: the original shipment of beef to Niigata counts toward your total. And if you find that you have a train that is shipping beef away from Niigata, it will not subtract your total. So if Niigata has a surplus, just detail a train to Niigata to pick up beef. Let it go just a short way down the track, and then reassign it to go back to Niigata. Instant beef loads! If the scenario designer had set Niigata's warehouse consumption to be at least double, then not only would this possibly not happen, but it'd also make better business sense to ship beef and clothing to Niigata. I don't know if the intent was to force your railroad to not only be limited in scope (with the track limits) but also to carry a task which will turn unprofitable, but to me it's unfair that Niigata's prices for beef and clothes fall so low that I had to keep some trains at their stations for months because "shipping ______ is unprofitable". You can't have it both ways, programmers. Either raise the demand so that financing this weirdness is easier, or face the wrath that is the very accurate RRT3 economic model which says that carrying coals to Newcastle is moronic. Just so you are aware, the above scenario (Niigata's unprofitability in satisfying the conditions for Gold) will get worse and worse as the 1980s roll around. Keep an eye out for it, and enjoy the fact that it says just "Gold!" as the winning message. 5.1.14 - The Seeder [Placeholder for future walkthrough to be placed here.] 5.1.15 - Scenario 15 - Dutchlantis: Bronze Medal: Connect country of Dutchlantis to Munich (in Germania) before 2051. Silver Medal: Connect Dutchlantis to Munich and Camelot before 2051. Gold Medal: Connect Dutchlantis to Munich and Camelot, haul 10 loads of uranium before 2051. Time Frame: Jan 2021 to Dec 2050 (30 years) Starting Position: Restrictions: Cannot lay unconnected track, cannot start multiple companies. First choice is between diesel and electric trains. Either one should accomplish what you would like, though I lean toward the elec- tric trains personally. Start at Kiel / Hamburg / Schwerin / Rostock area. Soon, you will get a message asking you to haul cheese; five loads yearly will net a $300k bonus. The first method to making money is to connect dairy farms to dairy processors; buy them if you would like. Next would be to connect waste to a recycling plant; buy your own recycling plant for more in- come. The recycling plants will provide the materials that your tool and dies need, buy those too if possible. The grainary to brewery path is another good route to take. Next, go to Slokovia in the southeast corner. In my game, there were logs to connect to the lumber mill which was built; the lumber mill dropped in price to $900k because of no logs. Connect the logging camp with the lumber mill for major initial profits and steady subsequent profits. More lumber will come in Germania, as well as some of the cheapest livestock ever (if no meat packing plants exist.) The cost to enter territories is a piddling $500k apiece. The larger cost is the bridge-building cost. To get to Germania, build the bridge from the coast to Wegvamwasser. This bridge will cost about $3M or so. To build the bridge to Britain, just check out the natural staircase north of Hemelweg. It'll get you up where you need to be. The cost to lay track to the coast will be about $1M, and it will cost another $10M to lay track to Britain. I was able to get a company which could earn about $5M in profit yearly, so I did not have too many problems with the income situation. 5.1.16 - Scenario 16 - Chip Off the Old Block. Bronze Medal: Connect 8 cities, personal net value $1M Silver Medal: Connect 12 cities, personal net value $10M Gold Medal: Connect 16 cities, personal net value $20M Time Frame: Jan 2051 to Dec 2080 (30 years) Starting Position: $200k of personal net worth. Restrictions: Cannot lay unconnected track, cannot start multiple companies. Going into this map, I didn't think it'd be as hard as it is. It certainly looks to be rather straightforward, and there are tons of hidden bonuses waiting for you to connect them. I'll try to describe the major events though, and hopefully you can get a gold too! As the game restrictions state, you have to start at Santa Monica Island. Therefore, build between Winnifred and Santa Monica and see about some industry investments. I have had extreme success in buying a tool and die shop in Santa Monica due to the recycling plant nearby. There are usually also logging camps nearby which provide raw materials for the lumber mill that usually appears in Winnefred too. Either of these facilities can easily make you $10M through the whole scenario and are definitely worth exploring. (A furniture factory is also a good idea for later in the game.) This seems like a good time to bring up another issue too. You may notice that scheduling trains for Winnefred is impossible with the map due to Winnifred's position in the map and the zoom tools located in the upper left-hand corner. To save you from a ton of useless work, just click in the middle of the tool where Winnifred is likely to be rather than zooming in/out to try to find the actual circle. The sta- tus bar at the bottom which names each station that your cursor is over should read "Winnefred" when your arrow is in the right place. If screenshots of this process are truly needed, please contact me and I will attempt to provide them as a supplemental file on gameFAQs.com. Within the first two years or so, the City of Angels will provide a bonus for you in order to connect the City of Angels to your network. It will consist of a $1M advance and $1M additional if you finish the connection within three years. While this may seem a daunting task, it is very doable and I never had any problems with the connection. Of course, if you do not finish the connection, you will get a penalty for each year that passes by that the connection is incomplete. (Way to provide positive reinforcement, City of Angels.) You will be extremely concerned with the profits that you can make in this map, because you have to also make good investment in your own company and to also try to get a good return on your possible stock in- vestment. $20M in personal net worth in this map is also very doable, but it requires you to balance the dividend with good business deci- sions too. Sixteen cities should not be too difficult once you get City of An- gels connected. You already connected seven cities at this point any- way; just connect the rest of the City of Angels island, the four ci- ties in the southeastern part of the map, Macho Grande, and any cities toward the north that you may choose. Also of note, some other cities may reward you with bonuses just for you to connect them. I believe Big Sky in the northeast will reward you, as well as a few other larger cities. While I do not have a de- finitive list (and will accept one from anyone willing to provide one), suffice it to say that if it doesn't cost a lot to hook up the next town on the list, try it for fun and see if someone gives you money. This map will not be great with passengers, so therefore you have to make a major effort to connect commodities up. On top of that, because of the fragmentary nature of this map, the Tycoonatrons will not have much success transporting commodities easily. I noticed on this map that bauxite and iron were both extremely undervalued, and I also no- ticed a new strategy that you may have to endure. In one playthrough of this scenario, I had a steel mill in Solum- squallis and I had coal just north in Macho Grande. I also had an iron mine on the City of Angels island (south of Textile, in the hills). The coal was of reasonable value and the coal mine was making money without too many problems, so therefore the coal mine remained open. However, while I was making a massive profit operating an iron train going to Solumsquallis, the iron mine itself was rather unprofitable due to the fact that the price of iron locally was $1. With a price that low, this meant that the iron mine itself was un- profitable without my railroad. After only three years, the iron mine disappeared. If my railroad had bought it, the mine still would have taken a loss, but the supply would have remained. This was important because while there was a second iron mine, running only two loads of iron to the steel mill per year meant that the steel mill made less than $100k of profit per year, and industries running on that steel (automobile factories, tool and die shops) could not obtain the mater- ials they needed as well. Therefore, take a very long look at buying the raw material facil- ities in this map even (or, *especially*) if they are unprofitable if you need them to keep producing. To my knowledge, they will not dis- appear if your railroad company is subsidizing them, and ultimately your trains AND your production facilities will make the profit that the production facility is losing. (If ANYONE finds a facility that disappears after your railroad has bought it, please notify me soonest. While there are still theories about situations like this -- exhaustion of naturally-occuring ores, for instance -- the game itself should never shutter a facility you own.) Two postscripts for this map: 1. For the $20M personal net value, do not bother owning every last share of stock. My suggestion is to keep between 20% to 30% of the stock on the open market until the end, as when you do a massive buy-in of the stock it will drive the values up and it could get you up and over the $20M limit that you need. I kept a very close eye on my num- bers toward the end of my last game, and found that when I had a large amount of stock on margin (my cash value was under -$3M), I was ac- tually paying a percentage per month as interest for maintaining this debt. This is one of the two reasons that you shouldn't bother trying to buy all of the company stock too early. 2. There are earthquakes ALL THE TIME in this map, mostly centered in a couple different areas. One is Macho Grande, and you will have to rebuild track in this area once every three years or so. I have not noticed too many other damages for other areas, thankfully, especially since connecting the northern parts of this map require a ton of track. Good luck! ____ 6.0 - Railroad Tycoon 3 Game Patches / Updates ____ As of 2007, an update does exist for Railroad Tycoon 3 - a small expansion pack titled "Coast to Coast". It can be found at most game download sites, and it is free! It's also about 110MB, so by all means use your own high-speed connection or borrow someone else's. It includes five new maps, and the programmers tightened some of the gameplay and economic models. A longer discussion may follow if interest shows between the old and new versions. ____ 7.0 - Frequently Asked Questions ____ Q: How can I find a specific commodity? A: There are multiple ways to do it. The best way though is through the Globe icon. If you click on the Globe and choose the cargo, it should show you triangles pointing up and triangles pointing down. The upward pointing triangles indicate that a supply is present. The Globe icon is easiest. But if you don't like that method, look for the buildings which supply the cargo too, which should be in the instruction book. At a later date, I may attempt to add them to this FAQ, but suffice it to say that if it's a crop it'll be on a farm, if it's an animal product (wool, livestock, milk) it will be on a smaller farm, if it's a resource (coal, iron, logs, oil, pulpwood) it will be on a building in the middle of nowhere, most likely, and if it's a finished good it will come from a building which will *likely* be in the city. Check ports and warehouses too. They will demand cargoes that you may not have a demand for anywhere else and can also supply cargoes which may not be supplied anywhere else. The Globe icon will show all of these things too, if you click on it. Q: What is the best way to bankrupt a company? A: There are dirty tricks that you can engage in to weaken a company if they become too strong for you to swallow up. Building your own track and stations which mirror their track and stations is the most popular choice; if you're picking up and delivering their passengers, then they won't be able to do the same. When doing this, you HAVE to buy a lot of trains to make sure that the supply of profitable cargo is as close to zero for your competitor as possible. Don't be surprised if your company may be taking a loss to do this, but the theory is that you can take the cargo from your competitor's cities and make a better profit by shipping it to other cities that you have already connected. Connecting track and inviting the computer to use it would be another choice, as the computer may use the track to deliver to your station(s) which would make them little profit but give you free money with which to collect with an eye toward merging. The last thing only works if your personal net worth is huge, and you have the ability to own at least half of your company as well as half of his company at the same time. You can resign the chairmanship of your company and take over the competitor's company. At this point, first destroy all of the track and retire their trains. Then, use all the available cash; build production facilities in your own towns, or build maintenance sheds on track that your old company owns. Once they're run into the ground, resign their post and retake your own. Short-sell their stock immediately, wait a year or two for them to go belly-up, sabotage them further if they try anything funny, and soon they should be weak enough to swallow up. This only works if you own at least half your own company too, as your shareholders usually won't be too crazy about giving you control of their company once again if you deliberately sabotaged a different company, and will likely keep you out of the management position unless your ownership stake is high enough. Q: If prices have stabilized for routes which have matured, is it still worth it for me to ship the same material to the city? A: If the question is confusing, I'll try to provide an example. For thirty years, you ship East Eastie livestock to Westerham for Westerham to produce meat. At this point, Westerham has about 20.0 loads in stock and the profit for East Eastie livestock is possibly $10 per load. Is it worth continuing? That is completely up to you, as a matter of fact. It is another example of opportunity costs. You can find out if a train is making a profit purely by clicking on the train, and if the train (and route) is still profitable then why throw it away? However, if you can find a more lucrative route, by all means reassign this train so that it can make you a better return on your investment. Use the pause button and analyze your routes if you'd like. Of course, if thirty years has passed, I would hope that you can also buy other trains and don't have to micromanage routes, and if you keep the consist at East Eastie to 'automatic', the train may find better and more profitable cargoes to send to Westerham instead of livestock. Q: When I ship long-distance, the price for the cargo goes down as time elapses between pickup and delivery. Is it worth shipping long- distance? A: Again, this is an opportunity cost issue. Even for raw materials, if there is a wide disparity between costs, you will likely receive a lot of money in order to deliver each car. As well, I *think* that there is still a premium added to cargoes if they have to go longer distances; I will have to check some of my old games to see if this is the case. Usually, the time penalty for shipping will be nowhere near the profit that you will receive for shipping the material though. Before building a new long-distance route, make sure that the cargo you may be expecting to see if you're still on automatic is demanded at the other end. Last note: you *may* be pleasantly surprised if you create a long- distance route and leave the consist to "automatic". Sometimes there are cargoes which can be shipped at a higher profit than passengers. Q: I micromanage cargoes, and sometimes my trains don't make a profit! How can I make them profitable? A: If you enjoy micromanaging, that's cool. I have learned through playing this game that you may want to try a different approach to micromanaging though. First, set the two stations where your trains will go. Then do the micromanaging that you need to do. Before you finish editing though, try clicking the two stations again so that it is the same route twice, and this time set the cargo consist to "automatic". You may find that other cargoes in the same town are more profitable to ship. Q: Given the following: East Eastie --- Centreville -- Westerham Grain Farm Brewery will I make a profit by setting one train to go between East Eastie and Centreville with grain and then setting one train to go between Centreville and Westerham with grain? A: Perhaps. Just be sure to know that the East Eastie to Centreville train may not be very profitable at all, and the game refuses to let you move cargo which is unprofitable. The only way that grain is de- manded in Centreville is if they have a facility that can process it (such as a bakery), or their houses demand it, OR the Tycoonatrons can ship it to Westerham. If there are natural barriers between Centre- ville and Westerham, such as mountain ranges or even rivers, the Ty- coonatrons may not be able to ship the grain from Centreville to West- erham, and part of the demand for that grain would not exist for that reason. On the other hand, if natural barriers prevent Tycoonatrons from shipping a commodity, if your railroad defeats those natural bar- riers there will likely be a lot of profit to earn because when the Ty- coonatrons ship some of the commodity, that means that you can't ship it and that you will lose out on some limited amount of the profit. (Side note: it may also be profitable to send to Centreville if the Tycoonatrons can ship it to ANY other location... for instance, if South City were down a river from Centreville and also demanded grain, the Tycoonatrons would likely demand grain at Centreville even though they're not sending that grain to fulfill the demand in Westerham) My advice is to check the prices with the globe icon. You can point to any spot on the map and find out what the exact price for a commodity is when you click on that commodity to analyze, and then find out if two short routes may be a better idea than one long route. ____ 8.0 - Epilogue and Author's Notes ____ Firstly, thanks to everyone who has already emailed me. I have in- corporated your questions and requests into this FAQ, and would like to provide my thanks for your feedback and assistance. I welcome any feedback, from general questions to detailed points, new strategies or even specific comments and criticisms with my writing or methods. Please email me at zoogz22 (at) yahoo (dot) com for any of the above, and I will answer you as soon as I can! As you may probably notice, the walkthrough is rather bare. I have placed gold on the majority of the campaign games in normal mode thus far, but the idea to write a walkthrough did not coalesce until two things happened. First, I found myself having trouble with some of the scenarios in the World collection, and thought that others may have the same troubles. Next, I found that an FAQ/strategy guide to this game existed as a published FAQ, purchasable on Amazon... but public opinion held that it was little more than crap. Many people expressed their displeasure with it due to the fact that it did very little to explain about the economic models contained in Railroad Tycoon 3. The only problem is that as I encountered all this information (peo- ple having problems with scenarios, and people having issues with the economic models) they were all timestamped 2005 and before. So again, I hope that by releasing an FAQ for this game that some de- voted fans are still out there, and that this is useful to someone. For my money, the Railroad Tycoon games were some of the most fun business-strategy games that I've ever played, and the trains just make it enjoyable for pretty much everyone. And now that you get to "ride along" and see the scenery of, say, Upstate New York... or England... or Eastern Europe pass along before your eyes, it's that much cooler. Good luck and happy railroading! (c) Scott "Zoogz" Jamison, 2007.