East China robbery

[stumpy]

I am playing the East China scenario with diverse victory factors.  One is to deliver toys to export.  I have a convenient toy factory in Beijing which requires plastic.  The plastic comes from a plastic factory and I found one to the south in Jinan.  The plastic factory requires oil as a raw material.  No problem, because there is a solitary oil well in Dongying, about $300 worth of rail north of Jinan and about $450 or rail and not one, but two bridges away from Beijing.

I first built my station in Dongying and then connected it to a station Jinan.  Looking good, eh?  I then ran a train, including one car of oil, from Dongying to Jinan and back.  I got one load of plastic in the process and then connected that section of rail to the main line to Beijing and sent the train to the toy factory.  I was disappointed when I did not get a load of toys in return.

That train was then dispatched to Qhinghuandao, the nearest port, and then back to Dongying to repeat the process.  This time The Little Engine That Almost Could picked up three cars of oil which, when I got to Jinan, produced NO plastic. 

What gives?

[JayEff]

Look at the Overview for Cargo Supply, select the relevant cargos and have a peek at them - the oil, plastic and toys. Hovering a mouse over a square will tell you the price at that location, or you can look at the colors. Red is low price, yellow is medium, green is high price. Cargo flows from low to high price. This happens to a single cargo as it flows across a map, but it also affects whether or the speed with which it is consumed by a factory. So for example, if around the toy factory, the toy display is red, the factory will produce slowly if at all.

If the factory is new it may not have had time to create a demand for plastic. Is the plastic display red around the factory? In time the colour should change.

It takes time for the new product to be produced. You can watch the plastic be consumed on the plastic display, and toys produced on the toy display. Also you can left-click on the factory and find out if it has produced anything.

If there is a tool&die shop nearby, it may be taking the plastic to make goods. Check plastic color and prices around the t&d shop, and likewise check the goods display.