Hi Hysteresis, after looking at the latest picture I am starting to learn the way you play and as asked for some hints and tips:
- First your trains have no or little station instructions, order like "Full Load" are missing this is leading to trains becoming inefficient wasting time and money, at the end of each year about two thirds of the trains are making a lost. If you would like more information here is a good link,
http://wiki.openttd.org/Orders#Station_instructions.
- Your cargo does not travel straight to the final point, it travels from A to B to C to D and finally to E. My suggestion is to only have one break in the chain, having more main hubs feed by local stations in each area and the main hub has a direct link with the end point station.
-Use Ro-Ro stations in all situations, it is faster to expand, easier to update and maintain in my mind.
-Use PBS more info here,
http://wiki.openttd.org/Signals#Path_Signals.
-Finally the size of the stations you should increase the local stations sizes, and decrease the number of trains at those stations, also the main hubs in turn should be bigger, much bigger, on ratio level it should be about 5:12 (local:main station size) ratio.
Great work kept it up, hope this helps,
JS.