Also, plan ahead. Cities you service will grow. Plan to develop for quick growth, especially cities that are near a supply of upper tier cargo carrying a great delivery fee, such as Gold or Gasoline. Then you can quickly add lucrative routes to supply these new appetites.

Freight revenue is independent of distance, so whenever you have a choice opt for the shorter delivery route.

These game-play tactics which are needed on difficult maps take some time to master. In the meantime you may want to give yourself some extra starting cash.

Increase starting cash:
– Go to the Forum section of this site, then the topic I made entitled “Nine Easy Ways to Improve Gameplay — Simple XML edits.”
– Download the attachment on the first post. Unzip it.
– We only need one file: “RRT_Difficulty”. Copy this file into the map folder ( … Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Railroads!\User Maps\CP21v3).
– Open the new file. Preferably with an XML editor, but Notepad will do.
– You will see a list of all the difficulty levels followed by their individual settings.
– Find the difficulty setting you are using and increase the value “iStartingCash”.
– Save the file after the change. Close it. Next time you start the map, you will have more cash.