New Map - Belfast Bridge Ver.1

[Gwizz]

This is a 10 year map that makes use of 7 extra managers, besides the normal managers you can hire.  The dialogs will explain how to hire these managers, etc.  The Goals are simple: work for a given  Player net worth for a win.

It could be an easy map since one time I tested it to Bronze by using start up money to expand the rails and bought 5 more locos.  Then I put the game on fast forward only to test dialogs.  I didn't expect the game to give me Bronze without any more of my input.  It only happen once.  I have lost, won Silver and then won gold in about 7 years.  I expect the best players to win gold in about 5 years.

Belfast_Bridge_Ver_1.zip

[Gwizz]

On this map should you use 2 of the long single track bridges,  I found I could maintain right hand running on these bridges without the trains stopping or crossing over each other when they were entering or were leaving the bridges.  An example of right hand running can be seen on the map (using one wood and one single track steel bridge that can not be built in the game) where they cross the channel from England to France.  The long single track bridges can be built in the game.

 Double track    Two single track bridges     

=============----------------<--------

 on land          \                               \     double track on land   

                          --------------->--------==================

                                                                       

[Gwizz]

For some different game play, I tried giving up my chairmanship and selling all stock after setting up my railroad to be profitable and then letting the game run for 3 1/2 years without a chairman.  I then bought into an AI RR.  I couldn't afford the stock of my old RR. 

I forgot I needed to hire one of the union managers that are only avaible for 3 years, so that I could gain access to the whole map. So about 30% of the map remained closed to me. Well I played on with this handicap and became a ruthless tycoon.  I lost.  :-\

[Gwizz]

Played my map last night.  Somehow it seems like it has gotten harder to play.

At the end of the first year I wanted to control the two pre-started shortlines and own controlling interest in my own stock.  I had about 4 million in margin and about 1/2 million in cash.  On pause, when I tried to sell my own stock to reach the 51% ownership level knowing its value would drop, But selling dropped the stock value so much, I received a margin call while on pause.  I had saved the game on Jan. 1st so tried different methods to get out of margin.  No luck.  The best I could do was about 1/2 million of negative cash and no stock ownership.

I thought with the win goals of PNW I wonder if I could come back with no stock ownership.  I have 9 years of game left.

Tonight I will try to see if this is possible. 

Later.

[Gwizz]

Well it is less fun being a pauper.  I started out continuely increasing the dividends until the light blub came on upstairs.  I no longer own any stocks.   :-[

Year 2:  It seems the interest on negitive 1/2 mil. is a little more than my investers are willing to pay me and darn if I can keep them happy.  I looked at bankruptcy but found only a company can go bankrupt in RRT2.  The company is in excellent shape.  Making a good profiot even with 10 million in bonds at 9%.  But, those investers are gobbling up my companies stock.  I feel like a newly cracked egg in front of these fat cats. 

I'm now at year 4, June.   I have bought 18 - 1020s now have 48 locos 8 are DE 2/6 IIs.  The Durnalt Locomotive plant went belly up.  There was 6 2/6 IIs at the plant.  I think a RR in India bought them for a song.  I built one long single track bridge to Dublin from Anglesey.  I have 6 Stations in Ireland and 39 stations in England.  I had to do something. Those Gents in Ireland were putting me up in the millionaires club, where you get a cot, a blanket an 2 free meals.

  Since I have a milk plant close at each end of the bridge.  Milk is my most profitable cargo.  I ship Irish milk to England and English milk to Ireland. I've started construction of a 2nd bridges beside the 1st bridge.  At first the Irish didn't take to English milk until I put some of the brown powder it it from India.  Now even the English are giving up their tea for choclolate milk.   A big money maker.  I also trade cement for rubber for a good profit at the ports to make tires for the Auto factories.  Of course my uncles fertilizer business is a money maker as well.

The passengers started a strike because of the high prices I charged for mail and milk.  I had to give in and reduced mail by 50% and milk by 25%.  I have a sharp business manager he was able to raise the price of milk before he reduced it by 25%.  So milk is still very profitable.  Maybe the chocolate has stopped any complaints 

Before the merger call in January of 1921 which cost me all my stocks,  I had hired Stevens to reduce track and bridge building by 20%.  At the end of 1922 I hired him again for added savings.  I also hired Melville-Hays for another 40% savings on track.  He had a safety risk problem and my 1st 1020 did crashed.  But, it crashed on the way to the English milk plant and I had just built a cut-off that removed the milk plant from the main line.  Had one close call whan one train just missed cliping another trying to miss the accident.   My last union manager was Willard used to increase speed, etc. of my locos. 

I've double tracked all the main lines.  Had to use an AIs rail for a short distance to get more gravel to turn into cement, rubber. tires so I can make that 1st car.  Before the end of this year I hope to finish the 2nd bridge,  I've already payed the bonds down to 8.5mil.  I plan to keep the bank account above one million so the investers will pay me more. 

Not much chance for a win.  But if I can turn my negitive cash positive I will feel better.  At least the English don't treat me like a Pauper. 

[Gwizz]

Well I got some respect from the Irish when I built the 2nd bridge to Dublin and doubled the train service.  I got two blankets on my last over night stay.  I didn't complete the bridge until Feb. 1924 one month late.  If I had been on time I might have gotten 3 blankets.  My Negitive cash at the start of 1920 went up by 1K to $-612K.  Bunner.  :-\  I paid down the loan debt to 5.5 million.  The investers must have liked that since my negitive cash dropped the $-595K.  I'm now $17K less in debt.  Running 61 trains all 1020s.  I lost one train when a big storm took out one of the bridges to France.

Well, my goals to be out of debt in the next five years doesn't look very promising.

[Gwizz]

!925 has ended and the Irish civil war seems to be over.  I'm still not sure where the boundry between Northern Iseland and the new free state lies.

I was asked to rebuild the distroyed RR to Limerick.  When the 1st train from dublin reached Limerick, the mayor was so happy that he put me up in his home. I was treated like a king. What a differance from how I was treated before.  It was here I found out why I had been housed in a poor house for the last 4 years.  It seemed the IRA was active around Dublin and my company was hiding me.  They never told me.

There are still problems between the protestants and the Catholics along the rebuilt route.  I was not allowed to build a station in Tipperary or Cork even though my rails passed close by.  These are strong IRA towns.  While I argued that I had been able to get along with both sides, my argument went as empty breath.

My investors seemed happy with me this year.  I was able to reduce my negative cash by 37K to $-558.  at the end of the year I got a raise from 13K to 56K.  The line to stormy Northern England is still single track, so I ship new locos to Aberdeen and run as many a 6 trains South.  When the last one reaches Middlesbrugh, where double track starts,  I send 2 or three trains in the opposite direction.  My steel mill at Middlesbrough has been pumping out more steel than one cannery and two auto plants can use.  No autos yet.  There has been a problem getting rubber shipped into the ports.  At years end I had two rubber trains and one train with tires on route.  Iron and coal is stored near Middlesburg waiting on the price of steel to increase.  Milk and Fertilizer are still my big profit cargos.  I added an extra station at each milk plant, but demand was still too low.  The people may have lost the taste for chocolate milk.  So I ran track to two more cities with a milk plant.  Hired some new engineers and cargo got a bit mixed up for awhile.  Their hauls are better now so I won't fire them. 

The Cattle pens are full but Limerick has a meat plant and a milk plant.  That civil war stopped just in time.  I bought more locos for these hauls.  I now have 72 locos.

Bond debt down to 2 million.  Maybe 1956 will see the RR bond free and maybe there will be another raise for me.

 

[Gwizz]

1926 was a good year for the railroad.  I paid off all bonds, but the economy dumped and the investors, to save some money, dropped my Salary to $49K.  My personal debt is now $-512K. It seems like there is no chance of going positive.  I didn't loose a train, even with the uneasy peace in Ireland.   My lack of autos has to do as much with the progression of cargos needed to make tires as it does with the problem of having only one tire company on the map. But the biggest problem was congestion at the London auto plant station.  To fix the track I had to stop a number of trains and give others orders to highball it out of there.  Still the company ended the year with over 2 million in cash. Bought a couple more locos.  Next year should be better. 

I've never been the poorest chairman before. I'm dead last and the only one with negitive cash.  Those AI chairmen must be laughing.  :'( 

[Gwizz]

Well 1927 was a fairly good year.  $4 million company profit and 1.2 million in cash.  I had over $6 million of profit for each of two years in the past.  I have 86 locos now. Almost too many for my cargo supply. I built no new track or stations.  The investors are a bit happer.  They reased my salary to $51K.  My negative cash is $-475.  Two years to go and the pain will be over.

I see no way of becoming a tycoon again after the full blow of a margin call.  The worst part of it the other chairmen cross the street to pass and avoid me.  Seems like being a poor chairman is catchy or something.  :-\   

[Gwizz]

Had another 6 million profit year.  1928 ended with my net worth at $-438K.

Since I couldn't do much to improve my status, So, I started playing for fun.  I now own 97 1020 locos, more stations and track.  The company ended the year with almost 3 million in cash.  It was still not enough to impress the stock holders into increasing my salary very much, although they were not happy when I started selling stock dropping the stock price for a while.  I needed extra money to build track.

The only happenstance was the Equil Franchise Act giving women the right to vote.  Passenger business increased some after that Bill was passed.

With one year to go I plan to build more track in Ireland.  If we have to, we will add iron plating to the sides of the locomotives and add some armed guards.  But, we don't expect the IRA to give us much trouble.  The company trys to be a friend to everyone.   Even the other railroads have left us alone.

[Gwizz]

1929 was some kind of a year.  More on this shortly. Only had a bit over one million in company profits. I was surprised we did that well. My net worth is now $-391.  Until this year I didn't know who was keeping me out of debtors prison.

This is how the year went:

To start the year I took my private car to see the new Kent station in Cork Ireland.  The passenger train we had planned to couple to had been delayed. An engineer appeared saying his frieght run was complete and offered to pull our car with his 1045 freight motor.  It was now dark and we thought by running light with one car, we could make good time.  We were glad that our delay was ending as the 1045 coupled to my car and we were quickly on our way.   

As we were approaching Cork, a torpedo stopped the train.  The engineer appeared with some buddies, saying we had to take a siding as there appeared to be a problem ahead.  His buddies stayed in my private car As the loco shunted onto a siding. It picked up a flat car in front, reversed and after a short distance crashed into a flat behind which such force as to slide nearly all the furniture in our car a foot or more. This flat coupled to our car on the fly without us stopping.  I headed to the loco to find out what was going on but I was stopped by one of the men with a small pistol in his hand.  I backed off.

To make a long story short, we shortly stopped and rail was removed in front of the motor that had shortly before been bolted in place.  After loading this rail onto the flat we preceeded for about 30 minutes.  Again rail was removed past a switch and loaded.  This was not a  company spur line.  Company rail was not as rough.  I could see what I was told at the time to be a mining district.  Now I believe it was Blarney Castle. 

After a short run, I was removed from my car and transported to a small house in heavy woods.  Here I spent a number of months but was treated kindly.  To this day I don't know where I was.  I was later told these blokes wanted a ransom for me.  Little did they know just how poor I was.  To my surprise the railroad investors took out 20 bonds on the railroad to bail me out.  It seems they were better friends then I had thought.   They were also paying the interest on my debt.  This is why they didn't give me a bigger raise.  The longer it took to pay off the debt the longer I would work for them.  Well maybe they were not the best friends I could have.  But, they did have a plan. 

The reason it took so long to free me, the investers kept the money and used it to build more rail and to buy locos for a total of 115 locos.  They spent all but one million of the bond money.  But as it turned out they were a bit smarter then I gave them credit for being.  They offered the outlaws stock in the railroad.  After my release, Black thursday hit and the stock prices hit rock bottom.   The investors had prepared the railroad for hard times.  Of course I suffered no loss as I didn't own any stock.   The outlaws were caught trying to unload these worthless stocks.

As it turned out, my friend the mayor of Limerick who had treated me so well was involved in the planning.

The investors have promised to give me the one million of I stay one more year.  So it seems I have one more year before this story is over.  After paying off my Debt I will have $600K to play with.   

[Gwizz]

[move]The preceeding storyline are some of my thoughts for a version II of the Belfast Bridge map to add to what is already in the map. I don't want to show all of the puzzle parts.  And, I'm very busy this week.  So I will think about this map and wait to see if anyone is really interested in playing such a map.[/move]

[Gwizz]

Finished my last year as Chairman of BB RR.

Since I had agreed to remain the chairman of Belfast Bridge RR for one year I kept my bargin.  I didn't having enough dollars to control the BB Stock.  So I just took the million dollars and continued as chairman.   

After my negitive cash debt was retired, I looked for a good one year investment for the remaining 600K for a good short term return on my money.  Buying stock during a depression is too risky.  Industrial investment looked good.  There was a number of industries that were giving a good return and were unowned.

After much thought I bought Blarney Castle at a depression price of $50K.  It will take a few years to fix up as a tourist area.  It even has a decrepit railroad near by that I can make use of. It is missing a few rails in a couple of spots and the locals I hired say they know where I can find rails and possibly some equipment cheap.

End of this story.   ::) 

. 

[JSS]

Thanks Gwizz.  At least someone that keeps still posting here. Have been following your posts all along and enjoyed it. Keep up the good work. ;D

[Gwizz]

Hi JSS.  Thanks for your comments.  With 80 downloads of the map and over 200 visits to the thread this was worthwhile.

I picked up some parts at Infotech and plan to work on my backup computer.  Since the sun has come out, it is hard to stay inside working on projects.