Make money early and fast.

[The Trump]

there is some good info out there by RedKnight, how to take full advantage to make the most money .
I just like to add an overall strategy that I used from the beginning in single players scenarios.
when the game starts, sell all your stock (money in your stock could be money used for track).
look around the map and start making a plan.
don't worry, time will not start until you lay the first track.
after making a plan, like to connect city a-b-c and bring oil from resource m to city b etc. pause the game and lay the track, build the needed depots and then add trains and route them. you can also consider which game objectives you want to fulfill, like if you have to get x amount of passengers from city a to city y in the last third of the game, why wait that long? maybe you can get there in the first third of the game and fulfill that objective a hundred years earlier.
now unpause the game and watch it making money for you.
lay track to your next city/resource and see how much it would cost.
don't worry about not being able to lay it just yet.
wait until you have accumulated enough money for that new track and a station (the train you can always borrow money for) and then pause the game again.
lay the track, build the station and assign a train.
unpause the game and repeat as often as needed.
this way you'll beat any scenario and outrun all your opponents.
if you need money fast, just use the game speed adjustment and run the game twice as fast until you have the needed amount of money.
pause the game or run it at half the speed to build or look for the next step to take.
and soon you'll drown in money and you can not only buy all your own stock but your opponents also, i always buy my opponents stock first and kick him out of the game unless I have to own a certain amount of my own stock by a certain time, which I then do first.
also consider to buy industries in cities that you will supply, before you even connect track to them. they will be cheep and your opponents don't bid high because there is no track to the city yet.

[snoopy55]

I see alot of things I use here. 1 problem I've had is that when laying track in pause, I don't always see the all the track and have other problems I can't recall right now. When auctions come up for ANY industry, I get upset because some AI is interupting my thoughts and outbid him just to get him off my screen. Works every time as long as I have the cash. And checking to see what it will cost to build is great because you can also find a cheaper way as far as tunnels and bridges. The only bad part is that you have to do it in one piece so you are limited a bit.

Good thoughts guy....now go see a dentist.......