ok,ok so i am obviously not a smarty pants (but these things are things i just figure out LOL, i have been away for a long time)
ok so i am also assuming that people regularly do my next plan?
HEAPS (and i mean about 1/4) of the towns on the map do not have an industry at all associated with them, so they suck really really badly, and the towns never grow.
busses p*** me off Sooooo much, they get jammed, they are slow, they earn no money.... trains are however to big and take up so much space.....
so i have used an old old tactic that i saw for some guy that made a 1 million somthing person cit. SUBWAYS
i build one on every town that is tiny (i mean starting when they have no city buildings and half or more of the stations i build will not even accept passengers), at least two of the stations do need to though.
anyway here is a newish one (by new i mean in its first year of profitability, before i did it, it was 3 houses and a church), on a town that used to hate me, and under that is one i prepared earlier (and the town is currently one of the medium sized-bigger towns on the map) also on a town that used to hate me. the first three year and the trains lose big money, but after that the town becomes huge and the trains (although only 3 carridges long) can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
can turn a useless town into the biggest money earner, and can also be done from early in the game. (using signals on every corner the direction can be forced (so no orders required), and multiple trains can be used when the city gets huge)
but i guess its something that everyone does already, and me feeling proud of it, is like someone feeling proud of building a railway track LOL???