question about profit from longer distances

[daitanfutekina]

I've read stuff from the wiki and various forum pages about how typically longer distance gives more money. but is that distance based off of the the direct station to station distance (like the hypotenuse of the two different points) or is it rather the distance they travel over track? and if its the later, could i snake my tracks to make a inefficient route to artificially make more money?

[_dp_]

It's distance station to station, snaking is pointless.

[Tsylatac]

From the wiki:

Distance is measured between the name-labeled tiles of the stations, not from the industries or by vehicle distance traveled. It is computed by adding the differences in x and y tiles (manhattan distance), not straight-line distance.