Hawk & Badger Railroad Forum

It's ME fellas, the lessor of the Tycoons, but love to play.

I will take all your suggestion in the playing, but having a time trying to get across the river to Manhattan. Bought into the New Jersey Rwy, and that is where it ended. Tried a number of different approaches without any success.

Does a player have to establish a "ferry boat" to gain the access???

Sounds possible, just don't seem to find the answer.

Ray of Sunshine

Oddly enough, Ray, you are right.

Historically, most of the big railroads ended at the New Jersey bank of the Hudson River. Bridges and tunnels were really expensive, so they came along later.

In the game, you can cross the Hudson at the very start with the New Jersey Central (best pick for a new player) or the Erie. If you don't do it immediately you lose the chance and will have to pay $5 million for access rights. Lama made a doughnut-shaped territory that encloses New York City; you can't cross into NYC until you have the rights.

My favorite line of play is to take the Jersey Central and eventually buy up the Baltimore, Wilmington and Phildelphia.

That is part of the problem. I did obtain the Chairmanship for the New Jersey Rwy. I only ran 1 round trip to the only other city. It was then that I tried to build a bridge across the Hudson, without success. SO, I tried to see if I could lay the track in a backward fashion both to the NJ depot directly, and indirectly to be connected farther down the track. Clicking on "whatever" I was notified that I had access rights, yet the tracks stopped at the river in the few attempts at different locations. Even tried to construct both the steel and concrete. No success. Does a person have to wait for the ""suspension"" bridges to become available? I believe that it is the reason years ago that I just ""shelfed"" it. Although I forgot that I had downloaded it at that time.

Somewhat of a puzzle.

Ray of Sunshine

Haven't played this since my posts above but my recollection is that (provided you had access rights) bridges were hard to build because there wasn't much space but it was a case of keep trying and eventually you succeeded. You still had to have room to build a station of course but don't remember this being a problem. I could be talking rubbish because my memory is bad

No Belbincolne,

You aren't making a mistake with your recollections, as too many other players have been able to make the transition. Just a challenge to keep trying and will make a report if I ever succeed.

Ray of Sunshine

As the Jersey Central or the Erie you only have 'free' access to NY City when the game starts - sometime in the first week or month it goes away and you have to pay $5 mil for it after that. You can have access to Manhattan and not have access to the thin Hudson Tunnel band that surrounds NY City - like being able to live in a pasture and not cross the fence.

Playing the 'Jersey', I pause the game first thing. As soon as I can win the chairmanship takeover I take out a bond and build a single-lane bridge from Jersey City into Manhattan, making sure to aim between the buildings and constructing a big station. Then I buy two Northerns on the Manhattan-Jersey City-Trenton route (starting one at Manhattan and another at Trenton) and an Atlantic for the Manhattan-Jersey City-littletownIcan'tthinkof thenamefor (yeah ). Once some money comes in I put a second Atlantic on that route and expand Trenton to a big station. In the second or third year I take out some bonds and extend to Atlantic City, and begin working on buying up the Reading or the B-W-P.

The Jersey makes enough money that you can purchase airconditioning, Pullman service and a good engine (Mallard, Zephyr or GG1) pretty early on. It is a nice cash cow. Hotels/Restaurants/Taverns in the Newark-Jersey City area and in Manhattan will do pretty well but the best place is Philadelphia.

Of course, you don't have to be bound by my formula. The Erie can be fun but tough; the B-W-P is fun but easier. You can get control of the B&O from the start if you work at it but oddly enough it isn't as profitable as the Jersey in the early years.

I seemed to play this differently to everyone else - and indeed probably to the way the game was designed, in that once I was installed as a chairman in a company I stayed there and just bought out any others that I needed in order to make the connection between the major cities that is needed.

I don't remember the name of all the companies, but I started in the top corner of the map, gaining access to one of the cities there. After upgrading everything, a bit of re-routing, and, especially placing hotels in all cities - especially the city hub itself as those generated up to $175K, or more, every year.

I then went hunting for another railroad to take over. This got me into another hub, where I repeated the process above. This time though I could also expand the exisiting railroad to a near by city to bring in extra money especially as I could buy some industries along the way (this money is channelled back to the player in dividends naturally.)

This was then repeated a third time with another 'cheep' company, but making sure that everything was linking up along the way. This would usual mean deleting the hub station of the company I'd just bought and, instead, re-routing the tracks into another companies station. The one I intended to buy next, of course.

New York was the hardest one to get into via this method, and one I probably should have done earlier as you get two points for that instead of one for all the others. but it was done eventually although i hadn't budget for the manhatton access costs, which delayed that a bit, as did having to knock down a few buildings in order to build the access bridge - eventually bridges - where I wanted it/them.

I did buy a better engine - the Zephyr - but only later on, when money for my company wasn't an issue and I needed to out service another company so I could crash it's stock price, in order to buy it out. I didn't buy anything else, although i do like the way that was set up.

Anyway, managed a silver when the time was up, with a rather frustrating, 98 points, just two short of the gold..

Still this was great fun to play, especially as it forced me to play in a way I usually don't - I'm more of a builder than stock trader - so great respect to the map builder

Everyone has different methods of play. Interesting.

I took the advise and as I became Chariman of the NJ Rwy, I constructed a bridge to Manhattan right away. Evidently in my initial attempt, and although the notice gave me access, a time must have lapsed for that early construction.

Anyway, With this initial step of constructing a depot in Manhattan, what is the object or purpose of the "tunnel"? There doesn't seem to anything other than a couple houses in NY. Evidently I am missing some "object" in its purpose.

Ray of Sunshine

There should be a lot of houses in NYC as well as some industries. You can make tons of money on the PAX and freight business from Trenton to Jersey City to NYC. Start with two Northerns on that route and before too many years go by you will need to add at least two more.

Okay EPH,

I guess I should have "termed" it as "nothing" but a house and an industry surrounding the "tunnel", so, why is there a tunnel?

Now you used the Northerns. I used the Pacific as it is faster by 10-12mph. And other than the expense of constructing track between PHL and BAL, I did merge onto the existing AI railway, and just ran a track into Washington DC. Manged to get the GOLD 5 years prior in 1945. Seeing that I rather to just "play" than be a Tycoon manipulating stocks, I only play the Medium levels nowdays.

Once I got your hint on the bridge to Manhattan, the fun was just in the playing. And the "option indicators" really added to the enjoyment, and I see that you have still incorporated them into your latest North-South Corridor. HOWEVER, I thought that you had said that you were going to use the GM&N title. Or did I misunderstand?

Ray of Sunshine

Ray of Sunshine wrote:HOWEVER, I thought that you had said that you were going to use the GM&N title. Or did I misunderstand?

Ray of Sunshine

See this post. viewtopic.php?p=20050#p20050

Hawk, there is no link to this thread under the map.

I just finished my first play of this map and played a normal game - taking over a railroad (C&A), building track to nearby cities, buying another RR for cheap access to Baltimore, building track, buying a third RR for access to DC and building more track. With these 3 RR's and 17 engines, gold came in year 17 on expert. I might have got it sooner if I had milked the second company before buying it. I did take over the Va RR first and isssue a bunch of cheap bonds just before taking over the RR, and that allowed me to buy access to the NY metro area, as my credit rating went to CCC just to get the takeover money, dropping to C after the takeover. After that point, I got 10 points for all but 2 years. I did not connect to any AI RR's as I was more afraid of them stealing my passengers, than wanting their revenue. However, I could not avoid a connction that came with my 2nd RR takeover and never got around to severing the connection that came with my Virginia RR takeover. That cost me 2 points for Washington one year when a foreign RR used my tracks to deliver and remove a lot of passengers. I never tried to compete on speed, running mixed freights between cities and mostly inherited Northerns between victory point cities for their ultra coolness. If I had realized that one of my takeovers gave me Zephyr access I would have built them sooner than I did.

I really liked this scenario. Upon seeing the opening set up I thought I was playing Avalon Hill's Rail Baron. After I got into NY, I thought I was playing SMR done right. Sometimes, I forgot to play, and just gawked at all of the trains running around. This scenario accomplished what I have been trying to do in my senarios, while also providing a great financial game that I don't provide. The game had a small number of engines which had to be carefully managed (especially in the first half), it forced you to play the stock market, you had to compete with AI RR's that were actually making money and sometimes stole victory points from you, fix up AI messes after you took them over, and it was fun to watch the trains.

Orange46 wrote:Hawk, there is no link to this thread under the map.

Got that fixed.

At first I didn't understand this one at all, but these days it is one of my favorite scenarios - exactly for the reasons you mention, Orange46.

I've rolled to victory with the Reading, and took Gold with the Jersey Central by refusing to buy any other railroads. But I've never attempted a win with the C&A. Congratulations!

EPH - I had to think long and hard about what to do with this scenario after I bought the C&A, especially since I'm not that good with the money game and would get killed in a multiplayer match. I thought that this was going to continue my recent streak of going goldless. I think that this scenario, along with mods like 1.06 and Trainmaster, along with WP&P's and others efforts should make RT3 a classic.

I can't resist a shameless plug - if you like North-East Corridor, try North-South Corridor. It is a tribute to Lama's original and I think retains the same play-style.

For all that North-East Corridor is a little easy it holds my interest through replay value. Another great Lama original is Baghdad Railway.

I have already gone bankrupt in N-S in year two and am currently rethinking my strategy. I think you noted in another post in a different thread that N-S would have traffic jams. Yes, I remember Bagdad, thanks for reminding me who wrote it. We need more non North America stuff.

I hope you've read over the tips and hints in the North-South Corridor thread. The economy takes a year or two to gel, but the $1 million you get from the Feds at the start of year 2 should tide you over.

If you have any questions or comments I'd love to hear them, but we should probably take the N-S discussion to the N-S thread so we don't confuse other players.

It seems hard to believe that I last gold medaled this scenario back in January. It shows how busy I am. My job has been demanding huge overtime. Anyway, I just recently got gold medal on the expert level with a third railroad, the Virginia Central. Only six more to go!

I just finished getting gold medal expert with the Camden & Amboy. Four down, five to go!