Good to see you back.
During the time you have been away, some of us have investigated a little closer how the game works. For example: fuel cost, reliability, engine replacement, passenger appeal, etc.. Those things can be found in the Letters to the Editor -> Rollingstock. Probably quite boring for the reading (long threads), and don't fundamentally affect standard gameplay. Although can do a recap on specific topics if you want.
Most recently I did a small
test to see whether a map reloaded from the Main Menu has more resources than the first load (after launching the game). I found that the game's random seeder doesn't work properly
unless you reload a map from the Main Menu. Each time we start the game, we must load a game, quit to the main menu, and then load the one we want to play. Subsequent loads will all be random.
I'm also convinced that such reload isn't an exploit as has been suggested. I think that was before this forum, but there's reference to it
here. This is a good thing for re-playability. Might make going back through old scenarios (I believe the campaign is largely immune: not as likely to start a chapter from scratch when first starting the game) more interesting if you were in the habit of taking the first seeding you got. For years this had been my habit. Maybe I'm the only one?
PS. Saw your quote about Vista. I assume you use the Vista Fix. There's an alternative now:
dgvoodoo2. There's no report of it working with Vista, but also no reports of it failing to work where the game didn't work from the box (Win 8, 10, Intel graphics cards). Of course, not many people have actually reported trying it. Might be worth checking out. Seems to give better graphics and frame rate. I'm fairly sure with it you could get 1.06 working, if you want.