yesterday i generated a medium sized map and saved it as base for further testing: start date 1890, 50 cities, 2k5 median pop, 9k tiles roadlength, industry grid 50, ind. crossconnect 30, map northengland 1680x1365
first try was a quick and dirty rail connection between two 15k pop cities. at a distance of maybe 500 to 1000 tiles. made major losses. found one minor bug: trains wont cross a grade change with a road with tram tracks. (won't include save as a similar will follow)
today i tried transporting wool. half of the track the trains could transport textiles on the way back. but they hardly got their running costs back. tried to grow to reduce the impact of maintenance.
before tweaking it i had a crash. an autosave has been saved directly before it (less than 1 minute). when restoring the savegame time was set to 1 jan 1910, instead of 1893. see savegame wool.
(where can i find logfiles providing more details about crashes?)
next setup started with the try to make profit with city transport. i set up tram networks in both cities. made a small loss. (with tweaking i could have come to zero profit, i expect)
tried again to connect cities, now with small towns inbetween. having both a slow train connecting all stations and a fast express train increased the number of passengers available greatly. the fast train in particular seems to draw passengers. the setup is making a huge loss by the way.
i found a nasty state, where trains are partially filled with passengers going to the station they departed from. in one case a train leaving blackpool east station was almost exclusively full with passengers traveling via blackpool east station. sending it back to that sation forced about half of the people out of it.
you can find this also in the savegame, with the train departing from manchester.
not having cheap bus stops available is also a difficulty when connection less dense areas.
there are some irregularities with some vehicles maint. costs. the blackpool tram costs only 0.06, while the other available electric tram in 1890 costs about 0.8. tram horses cost 0.06, while horses for carriages cost 0.66
PS: no files since to large, 2 min of battery left, ill try to upload again later
edit: james, i sent you the files in pm.
i've been in a hurry, and quite annoyed, when writing above (twice). please excuse that it is rather confuse and rough.