![frustration !hairpull!](./images/smilies/hairpull.gif)
I started in the Drummond/Tetonia area, which I selected because it had a big price differential but was easy to climb out of. I got different seedings each time meaning I built different industries first up (meat & textiles first time, lumber & paper second time) but they both worked well to get me started. Just as I broke out of the valley (took about 8 years or so to get the funds) I also bought all the dairy farms, which soon doubled in profit. I also got into the brewery business after connecting to Summit. After laying track as far as Old Faithful or Firehole I then bought/developed and broke out of Grayling using the same strategy; by now my annual profit was over $1m and I had plenty of cashflow to develop the rest of the map.
After about 15 years or so I had enough cashflow that connecting the towns in time was never going to be a problem, but $75m industry profit was looking like a stretch, so I used most of my profit to buy profitable industries from that stage onwards.
The risk with this strategy is getting enough pax out of Gardiner before the deadline. Seems to me that laying track out to Tower Junction and providing frequent service makes the biggest contribution to the Gardiner pax target, and both times, because I'd concentrated on the far end of the map, I didn't lay any track out of Gardiner until there were only about 10 years to go. I tried micromanaging the pax out of Gardiner but it didn't work very well (the stupid pax wouldn't board an express that terminated one stop short of their desired destination). But I have at least proven that one doesn't need to start at Gardiner to reach the target.
I declined the initial loan (since that option had only been added in later to make the scenario easy) and bought the snowplough both times, but otherwise made the opposite decision on most of the other options in each play. Never bothered with trying to lay the winding tourist track between Madison and Old Faithful for the bonus as it seemed like too much work, and by the time I got any iron and coal flowing to Gardiner for the bonuses I had money coming out of my ears so I didn't need it. I built a steel mill at Alice each time to attract the iron - the second time I was a bit smarter about it and didn't build it until I had a convoy of coal trains from Flagg Ranch about to arrive - and made some money out of it late-game.
Great map and great scenario
![cheers (0!!0)](./images/smilies/cheers.gif)
EDIT 4 Oct: Played again starting from Gardiner and was more successful, achieved Gold with 15 months to spare. I should mention that I issued stock 1-2 times per year, which can raise $5M p.a. or more in the later stages. I usually do this in any scenario that permits it (i.e. no PNW target) and don't believe I would have got close to this result otherwise.