Since I have a habit of only playing games for a dozen or two years at most before I get distracted by something, I figured I'd just create a thread for all the crud I play.
#reldreds graveyard of half-played saves
jolly portal
So let's start off. New map. Same as the last map. Broad channel!
We're playing Tropic again, but with an eclectic .grf mix. OpenGFX2 Settings allows some weird and wonderful mixes and this is one of my favorites. ITL2, NABS, re_fabs, etc. all loaded up as well
To make early income a bit easier, I'm going to get tram routes going in the major cities, later on as the main train lines snake past these cities I'll join them up to it
And again in Mariano
Manoa is a bit smaller than I'd like, but it is a City so boosting it early is still probably a good idea.
A small bit of expansion later and Manoa has it's tram line.
Now it's time to think about industries
We've got a steel mill smack bang in the middle of the map so that's probably a good place to start
it is at this point I realise I've left FIRS set on Temperate Basic...
jolly portal
Alright. Let's try again. Same as last time, except this time instead of In a Hot Country I decided to run Pikka's industry set instead.
Y'all know what the map looks like, so let's start with that tram line on the one lone city that the RNG gods have given us this time, Quito:
We're agriculture rich over here (that's a fruit plantation, the tree replacement doesn't do it any favors though 😒
A simple loop will suffice for Quito
Completed loop. This will keep the city ticking for a little while and should keep some steady income coming in since the rail lines will probably take a long time to build and JP Tracks are EXPENSIVE D:
I didn't even notice those Oil Wells in the forest either 👀
Now. Time to start thinking about industries.
The middle of the map is packed with Oil, and Agriculture, and I'm playing with no seccondary industries spawning on start so I have to build something if I want to get started. It's pretty inevitable that I'll end up with the same setup as last game, a long end to end line on the north bank of the river, and a long end to end line on the south bank, so I'm tempted to start building the north bank line, and put either an oil refinery or a food processing plant just up out of frame a bit on the north bank.
This spot near Machala is a bit rough, but running parallel to where a main line is inevitably going to go. It is very tight though. The only real options are going to be ultra long trains at a low frequency if I build here.
The answer is, let's just build a bunch of rails where I think I'm going to need them and worry about where I'll put the industry later
WHY ARE TRACKS SO EXPENSIVE, WHY JP TRACK SET AUTHORS WHY
So with that little ouburst out of the way, let's expand passenger services to the three neighboring towns of San Jorja, Fortin Esteros, and San Martin
However it's 1900 and we only have horses :<
So now we unleash fifteen six-horse carts on the poor town.
it'll be fine
don't worry about it
it's fine, probably
oh hey, RVG gives subsidies
Network as it currently stands
It's time to give Quito some room to expand, but we need to be mindful of these oil wells that we want to exploit, so some thinking needs to get done as to how we'll handle this. Short term I'll just fence off a corridor for some stations and lines and worry about it later.
Growth in Quito won't let up, and we've pencilled a couple of two tiles corridors in either side of the oil derricks, I'm not sure yet how this is going to look but given the proximity to the only City on the map it was probably prudent.
On a similar line of thought, the area around San Martin frequently sees a rather large rail interchange get built, so we should rough in some rails before it grows too much. I'll likely take the high route south of san martin, cross the road, then keep heading north west up the river bank. This location will likely see a decent sized bridge spanning the river as well at some point which will likely need to be traversed from either direction
😭
This is what's probably going to end up happening, main lines in red, shortcuts in green, likely bridges in yellow. All subject to change but this is more or less how the last game panned out.
Arguably we don't have enough horses for the inter-city traffic at the moment, but it's 1902 and in less than 10 years we'll have proper motor coaches. The trams are seeing their first generational leap though.
Not great numbers but we're only about $400k in debt, and once better vehicles become available the traffic and profits will skyrocket.
some standalone planning rails would be nice about now 😠
Fortin Esteros has seen quite a bit of expansion lately, so I've snuck in the rail crossing bright and early before I get built out, and snuck in an extra road stop to service the outskirts on the mainland.
Expensive tracks and low income have meant I've had to spend a lot of time building on fast forward. It's December of 1906 now, and San Borja and Fortin Estero have gone gangbusters. This'll be a prime spot for running a suburban train line, mixed use with the primary industries in the area
jolly portal
Quito hasn't grown much more, it's stayed relatively calm. The initial entrance to the oil wells station has started however
Took til 1910 but we can FINALLY abolish the horses
The last horse in service on it's way to the glue factory depot to be replaced
May 1912. Progress is slow but we've slowly getting there.
While finances are less of a problem now that we've swapped the horses for far more rapid gasoline powered vehicles, this stretch of bridge absolutely wiped all the funds we'd so-far accumulated in the last two years. This will allow us to push north to Iquitos, securing another valuable subsidy, and will give us the opportunity to find somewhere for our oil refinery to reside.
jolly portal
Quito finally gets its freight terminal, nestled between the oil derricks. I'm probably going to run food and various other goods through the station as well so I've split it up with waypoints between oil loading and general goods. I suspect the south-western side of Quito likely won't be allowed to expand down there as a large expansion to the terminal will be needed to accommodate road freight.
That's it for now! Time for dinner and teevee shows. I leave you with the soundtrack for this evenings build session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugiugMgIiZw
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It's a complete bloody mess, but we finally have passenger rail service.
President E.Phillips, tired of being cooped up in the company headquarters despite the Starbucks next door, steals a horse and makes a break for it.
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Not the most elegant station I've made but it's getting the job done so-far. Now we have Oil from Quito getting refined.
Current state of the network
jolly portal
New game time! Christmas Day edition. This time we're over on Cpt. K's Meandering Islands, 4k x 2k, 127 max height, sub tropical. 250 Towns, 100 industries, running an early build of AXIS 2.1.1 Tropical Paradise economy.
So far throughout today we've linked Iron, Limestone, and Coal off the two main islands. Industry placement has kept us running the entire length of the main island, with Limestone at the South Western tip going to a blast furnace in the centre of the main island, and to feed a nearby Coke Oven we had go to the next largest island to the North East, requiring three hops; first by train, then by boat, then by train again covering half the length of the main island.
Our Blast furnace is a pretty simple station design, there's marshalling yards to the south west, and trains take a pretty simple loop to make their way back south.
The Coke oven likewise is another very simple setup, no need for marshalling yards
One of the two Docks complexes, making quite a bit of use of the new CHIPS3
And the dock complex on the Northern island. At the moment only Coal is making its way through these docks, but as the game progresses I'm expecting these to get hammered. Single line to load, single line to unload. These will need to be expanded, but for now it's fine.
One of the two Coal mines on the northern island. There's a 2nd I haven't tapped yet that will drive a bit more traffic through here.
However unfortunately, the 2nd coal mine is literally on the opposite side of the map 
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Current grf list:
jolly portal
Got distracted this evening. We've finally got some Electric Motive Power on the network pulling a big haul of Coal from the northern shores of the main island. We've got two coal mines up that side to exploit.
The Coke plant saw a rather necessary expansion to fit the new electrified line. To keep things out of the way of the aging fleet of CNR9000's hauling coal from the old docks we've built a dedicated offloading lane.
The town of Waverly barely fits on screen anymore, sprawling suburbs have filled in the area around the most industrious pocket of the map.
jolly portal
It's 1949 and we've almost fully grade seperated Waverly's many rail lines from the road and tram traffic. Further duplication of main lines has also continued, allowing junctions to flow a lot more freely compared to previous. While truck traffic in Waverly has been slashed, it was at the cost of increased train traffic; the local coke and iron shipments now being handled with diesel locomotives.
Waverly Heights and Waverly Valley have seen extensive work to their industrial precincts to handle an even greater load of rail traffic. While road traffic has been slashed, these complexes still maintain their road loading bays for future growth.
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1952 and Waverly is already starting to look very different, high density apartment blocks now springing up rapidly.
With a strong supply of Scrap Metal coming from the town of Kent on the far eastern side of the main island, Waverly Valley is now starting to see an excess of Steel building up.
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Main island network as of 1954
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It's now 1957, and major structural works have been the norm in Waverly again, this time, we see a surviving Big Boy utilising the newly constructed freight bypass
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The northern end of Waverly saw massive restructuring and an initial attempt at grade separating the freight traffic, however the throughput of the furnace has put a damper on any immediate plans to complete the grade separation of the furnace station and surrounding rail lines and depot.
jolly portal
Over on a new island, Japanese EH10's have been chosen to haul Nitrates from Lexington Saltpeter works to the new docks down off the coast of Canton. These nitrates will then be destined to make their way back to the main island via boat, where they will then be shipped to an explosives factory.
jolly portal
Oh we started a new game? Ofcourse we did. What did you think was going to happen in this thread.
We're playing on Meandering Isles again, except this time we've turned the map on it's side. We started our endeavors on this mountaineous island first. What stood out to me was a Coal Mine, Coke Oven, and Carbon Black plant all on the same mountain plateu.
All sorts of dumb ideas were hatched, and then executed on. Steam trams handle everything locally, while a narrow gauge line winds its way to a small port.
Back on the main island this Coke was destined for a distance Iron furnace. Due to the much more mountaineous nature of this map, serpentines were going to become common, and long 12 and 16 car trains were likely going to be an extreme rarity
Cumberland, much like Waverly in the previous game is likely going to become the central industrial powerhouse of the map. Immediately to it's south east is another town, Liberty. Already the combined suburbs of Cumberland and Liberty are going to make construction difficult. I should probably tackle grade seperation early (It's 1923) than wait til the fifties to do it.
On the subject of mountaineous terrain, this particular map delivers it in spades. Maxheight was bumped to 255 from 127 on the previous round
jolly portal
Nevermind we went bankrupt in 1936...
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Aaaaand we're back on the previous save. It's 1973, and Waverly ofcourse is getting the crap beat out of it with new construction works. It's nearly time to build an island long highway system, but not quite...
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Initial stretches of highway being built by Republic and Waverly
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As well as the new highway weaving past Spring Hill and Bonanza, additional grade seperation work has also been done to the passenger line as it makes it's way through the suburbs.
Now that we're in 1977 it's time to bump up the daylength factor, we were previously on 11, now we're moving to 21 to keep the gameplay rolling a bit more
jolly portal
More grade seperation in Spring Hill City
