RRT2 Platinum campaign scen #16, The People's Train - Help!

[Wabash Jeff]

Friends,

I've been playing my way through the original campaign for the first time, on normal difficulty.  I've managed to win gold on every campaign scenario so far, but this China scenario has me stumped.  I've squeaked by to win a silver medal, but have not even come close to winning the gold in repeated plays.  I've read the strategy guide that comes with the game, but I just can't figure out how to pull this off.  You start cash poor, saddled with lots of initially useless rail, stations that need basic upgrades to function, a manager that jacks up your company overhead 20%, and in a time period where locomotives are expensive.  Turning this mess into a railroad with $40M equity in just 13 years seems to be beyond me. 

If there's a trick to beating this scenario, please let me know!  I can't seem to find it.

[loco_motive]

(Too bad we never saved a set of strategies for RRT2 like we did for RT3.)

Here's more or less what I might do:

Choose +10% passenger and mail revenue.

Ignore bulldosing existing track. Its maintenance is pennies.

I note I have William Strong as manager. That's good for now.

Issue a bond (stock issue not allowed, darn!).

Connect Beijing and Huainan with double track but ignore upgrading the bridge for now.

Retire the Mikado and buy 2 Alcos.

Use any extra $$ to buy restraunt or whatever for one station, and make sure first arrival lands there.

Send full Alcos in opposite directions between Beijing and Huainan.

For this first trip, haul passengers over mail if there's a choice.

When first train arrives in station, pause and put the train on stop.

Use that revenue to buy restraunt, saloon, post office, hotel for other station and unpause.

Let second train arrive, then pause again.

Finish upgrading the 2 stations, incl sand and roundhouse.

Replace the bridge with a stone bridge.

Then load up the trains with pass and mail and let 'er rip.

The $$ will come quickly now and soon with your income and further bonds, connect into 2 more cities, maybe Tianjin and Heifi, and fully upgrade them as above. Use F3A+B instead of Alcos if you have the cash. Then whatever else you want to do. Like pair up Shijiazhuang and Wuhan, then Shenyang and Zhengzhou. You'll be rolling in so much money you'll want to build additional double tracks to cut down the congestion as you'll probably be running 3-4 trains between some city pairs on a lot of shared track. You may also likely want to change some of the pairings to control congestion due to trains crisscrossing. As you continue to expand down to Hong Kong, you will want to change pairings to try to keep the same number of cities on each end of your setup. This is a nuisance but rerouting all those trains is part of the fun of the game.

Watch your managers. If you can get Oakes after your first 2 trains arrive, you may be able to get a few more bonds and do a nice expansion right away. You may get a diesel purchasing and/or track building one before long and also you'll find Pullman popping up in a few years.

Try for 2 things with your city pairings; get a reasonable match on size while keeping a high average distance between city pairs. For example, for 2n cities more or less in a row, each of the first n paired with any one of the second n will give a good result.

[Wabash Jeff]

Thanks for the help!  That got me started in the right direction.  The first time I played using your tips I got the silver easily, and nabbed the gold on my second try.

Victory is mine!  ;D

[UlfSun]

As loco_motive writes, the standard gold winning strategy for this one is to go for passengers.

As the "industrialist" I am, I would also suggest a freight/industry-strategy. I have won gold (on hard) several times using this strategy, even if it probably is slightly harder than the passenger oriented strategy.

Industrial profits alone could amount to over 4 mill per year.

The main problem with this strategy is that it tend to clog up the lines with all the freigh trains.

[loco_motive]

lol Ulf. I am also the compleat industrialist. (Try Heartland Heaven and see)

Anyhow, since this topic came up I decided to replay this scenario last month (on Hard of course) using my particular style of play for this kind of map, which is to get a good passenger base and then go after industry.

It is hard to ignore passenger development unless it is specifically required to do so. In this particular case I couldn't avoid gold in Feb/56, with Pullman as manager, excess cash, and running 29 F3A+B's. Only 14 of them were passenger and mail though. The other 15 were developing food from grain and cattle, goods from wool, cotton and steel, and an almost-ready auto industry that started auto deliveries before year-end. The next 6 yrs 10 mos to the 12/62 deadline is probably more than enough time to develop all the industry on the map, a tedious task indeed so I only played to the end of the year, just to see some autos come off the assembly line.

But you and I are old pros, like the guy who introduces the scenarios. Wabash Jeff has a ways to go, and probably hasn't even broken any windows yet, right Jeff?

[Hawk]

(Too bad we never saved a set of strategies for RRT2 like we did for RT3.)

That got me to thinking so I rummaged around on my hard drive and found some tips on campaigns 4 thru 18 from CeeBee's old forum.

Although they're not very detailed I might try to get them added to my forum.

I may just have to look around a little more. I might be surprised at what I find.  ;D

Edit 1: Just for kicks, here's CeeBee's thoughts on this campaign.

-20% track maintenance.  +10% passenger /mail revenue.  +20% station profit.

Have a company book value of 40 million by 1962.

I like choice number 2 as hauling passengers and mail seems the way to go. In fact thats all I haul as freight doesn't seem to pay much and just gets in the way. I took a manager that lowers the cost of buying steam engines. Then I connect Beijing to Huainan and buy 2 T-1's or Hudsons. I really like the T-1 on this map because of the break you can get on steam a little later. Once you accept the deal you can switch managers to either a passenger enhancer or possibly a "lower fuel price" guy. Don't bother bulldozing the track or stations you don't use. I just ignored them. Expand as fast as money allows around Beijing and south to Shanghai, and Wuhan plus cities in between. Double track and upgrade bridges as you can but I would stay out of the mountains. Run as many 6 car trains as there is available pass/mail. I run whatever is around, sometimes mixing and sometimes not. Micromanage if you like, but try to run full trains and long distances. Add the station improvements like restaurants, hotels, telephone, saloon and post office. I hit a major recession in the mid to late 50's which really hurt, but things finally improved in the 59 just in time for me to get gold in October of 1960.

I found campaigns 1 thru 3 also.  :)

I'll try and get all 18 campaign tips added to my forum over the next couple of days.

[Wabash Jeff]

But you and I are old pros, like the guy who introduces the scenarios. Wabash Jeff has a ways to go, and probably hasn't even broken any windows yet, right Jeff?

Broken any windows?  Noooo, not that I know of...  ???

Speaking of having a ways to go, I've finished the original campaign and have moved on to the Second Century campaign.  I'm finding some of these campaign scenarios quite difficult, and am currently stumped on scenario 14, Elbow Room.  If anyone can offer up some pointers on this scenario, I'm all ears.

Wabash Jeff

[Hawk]

I forgot to come back here and mention that I've added all the campaign tips to my forum.  ;D

[Wabash Jeff]

I forgot to come back here and mention that I've added all the campaign tips to my forum.  ;D

I see the tips for the original 18 campaign scenarios, but not for the 18 Second Century campaign scenarios.  Any hope of seeing them posted soon?  The tips in the Platinum Edition strategy guide for the Second Century campaign scenarios are so minimal as to be nearly useless, at least for me.

[Hawk]

Sorry Jeff. I don't have any tips for those campaigns. I don't think there was a lot of forum activity for RRT2 going on by the time the Platinum version was released.

[loco_motive]

Broken any windows?  Noooo, not that I know of...

lol Scroll to the far right side of the main screen for the classic campaign. You'll see some windows on the left. Left-click one of them.

As it happens, Cam Hills ("Tasmania") put together an extensive walkthrough site for the TSC campaign about 5 years ago. Unfortunately, that site has long since disappeared, as have all the sites from which he collected information.

As far as Elbow Room goes, I recommend you start a new thread so ppl can find it easier later on. I'll start trying to recall that one.

[SKISLAL]

I just signed up to confirm that loco_motive's simple guide pretty much does everything to get the gold here. Adding to instructions, I also connected Xuzhou to Beijing and Shanghai. These trains make money as hell. I also hauled some industry cargo and bought the working industries. It was very easy to get the gold.

[ConFuZed_tYcoon]

Huh! This works great. I've been pumpin' gold out (on hard of course) on every scenario until I hit The People's Train. Initially my thought was to start short lucrative routes between Beijing and Shijiazhuang with the F3A+B, and run the Mikado in the south with some cotton and grain to start my industry profits. But I kept getting swallowed up in track maintenance. So I tried loco_motive's strategy and received the Gold on my first attempt (I never thought to run multiple tracks up and down (as in the above image) to clear congestion, trying to keep track costs down; it's worth the investment big time).

 

P.S. Some old man told me I's scaring away the pigeons by breaking the windows, so I stopped doing that.