Edelweiss Express

**Edelweiss Express** is the fourth mission in the Second Century campaign of Railroad Tycoon II, as well as the fourth mission in the World War II and Aftermath act. The premise is the recovery of Austrian railways following the aftermath of World War II.

## Overview

### Introduction Spiel

> *One of the most beautiful regions in the world has been smeared with the charred filth of war. Austria needs your help to rebuild it's rail lines. Because of the diversity of terrain and the limited funds, some REAL serious thought needs to go into this project. Everyone's weary from the war, but it must be done.*
>
>

### Ending Spiel

> *Well, there were some close calls, but you've managed quite well. Now there's a faint call for you from Mother Russia.*
>
>

## Strategy - Hard Gold Medal

This strategy is based off the **Dreamcast** version of the level

**Requirements for Gold:**

* 10 million industry lifetime profit
* $30 million personal worth
* 2000 cargo loads delivered

### To-Start

Start off with Station Speed (40%). Why not 30% acceleration? The F9 is fast enough already, so i didn't find it to help much. There's not much time in this scenario to get the massive requires fulfilled.

Check the starting around area around **Vienna** and **Venice** (**Italy**) and make sure you have plenty of industry. You want to focus on **steel production**, so a **steel mill** with lots of **coal** and **iron** is essential. If you don't find what you can work with, restart the map. I recommend taking this scenario slowly, any wasted months can add up quickly and you'll find yourself 1 year away from winning with 2 months left on the game clock.

I don't recommend interacting with the other companies in this scenario. They snowball quickly and become too costly to buy and aren't related to your objectives. I don't recommend looking at building track in other countries except **Italy**, **Austria**, **Germany** and **Czechoslovakia**. The city Bratislava can be reached with a large station.

I recommend focusing on **Diesel** only, the F9 i found to be the best in most situations, **electric** should only be used when you need to move through high grade areas such as Italy's mountains and with that train i recommend the Ae 8/14

I recommend selling your **stock** in the company as your first action. Next, issue a **bond** and issue some new stock, this should give you about $550k extra to spend.

Now go into Territory and **buy rights to Italy**. This will wipe out $1 million, but also drag your company **stock price down to $11**. I recommend buying 1 or 2 stock at this point but no more until your new train is just arriving at the other station. If you're lucky, you can save $1 and get a bit extra. If you buy too quickly, you will drive the price up and waste money.

Here's the interesting bit, purchasing rights in Italy seems to make all buildings half price. So a large station now costs $100k with upgrades inside also getting the 50% cut.

Go to **Trieste** and carefully setup the shortest rail from here to **Venice** using **wood bridges**. You should have enough money to buy a F3A+B, load it up with 4 passenger and 2 mail to begin with from both directions.

Your focus is now to micro manage the cargo load on the single train to achieve and limit delays:

1. Saloon
2. Post Office
3. Buy Back stock until you own 100% of the company
4. A track to Verona
5. A second train - F9
6. Check what industry you can setup in Italy with minor track investment
	1. Alcohol from produce?
	2. Goods from Venice's cotton?
7. Telephone Poles are essential
8. Start upgrading to double check in parts where trains meet (normally wooden bridges)
9. Don't be tempted to upgrade to double stone bridge too early, not worth it unless you have lots of trains on one line.

From here its a case of rapid expansion, issue bonds, but don't forget to replace these bonds at a later date with lower interest. A rough ballpark is 2% is an improvement.

Things you can do and i recommend buying at least 2 F9s per station:

1. Continue the train track from Verona onwards to Milan
2. Create a long distance passenger train route from Vienna to Munich
	1. I recommend 5-6 F9s to shuttle a variety
		1. 5 passengers + dining cart
		2. 4 passengers + 2 mail
3. Create two seperate tracks from Vienna to Linz
	1. One track will service Linz passengers
	2. One track to serve the cargo that will go past Linz to and from Salzburg
	3. Feel free to buy another station, they are cheap and freeing up your routes from heavy traffic is essential
4. Vienna to Graz
	1. Tends to be plenty of industry opportunity around this route
5. Vienna to Prague
6. Bratislava
	1. Useful city, as Vienna can't produce the amount of passengers to keep flowing, Brat can supplement it well, so consider redirecting some F9s to this if you find it to be the case.