Large cities make great hubs for your rail empire. A string of large cities should be the focus of your main rail line. Only including large cities with passenger lines between two of them worked great in Railroad Tycoon 2, and still works great in Railroads!, but it does not serve in Railroad Tycoon 3. Each passenger has a specific destination in mind, and ignoring the smaller cities around the main ones will result in less passenger revenue.

Why is this? Let's say that New York has five passenger cars waiting for pickup. Three want to go to Boston (2 stars), one wants to go to Worcester (1 stars), and one wants to go to Lowell (1 star). If only Boston and New York are connected through a long main connection, we only get to move 3 passengers between New York and Boston. It would be very expensive and inefficient to make direct long connections from New York to Worcester and Lowell directly. What we can do is make Boston a hub city. A hub city should have direct short connections between it and the smaller cities that surround it, the spokes. The benefit of this is that we can get smaller cities indirectly connected to larger ones and increase the number of passener cars transported.

Example:

Main Line: New York < -Long Connection- > Boston

Short Lines: Lowell < - Short Connection - > Boston < - Short Connection - > Worcester

Now, when the main express train leaves New York, it will be carrying all five passenger cars. When it arrives in Boston, the one car that wants to go to Lowell will transfer to the next train heading to Lowell, and the one that wants to go to Worcester will transfer to the next train going to Worcester.

Hub cities also help the tycoon concentrate passenger traffic. If a passenger wants to go to a small city, he will transfer trains at one or more hubs on his way. Hub cities should be prepared for this with Hotels and Restaurants. Hotels make money on transfers because the passenger has to stay somewhere until the next train arrives. Restaurants make money the more passengers that visit them, regardless of whether a transfer is needed or not. By concentrating traffic through these large hub cities, amenities like Hotels and Restaurants will make a killing. You may also want to consider building a Tavern in the hub cities, but only if the hub produces enough passengers on its own as a Tavern only makes money when a passenger boards the train. You may also want to consider building a Post Office if you're allowing express trains to carry mail through hub cities. Like passengers, mail also has a specific destination. Post Offices do not make money, but they slow down the rate at which you lose mail by sitting too long in one station.

Freight has benefits from the hub as well. Cargo moves on its own over land, just much slower than if moved by train. A hub setup helps distribute needed fright. Freight transported between hubs gets stored in the hub until it's moved again or used. Any short trains that visit the hub can take some of this cargo back to the small cities. Short trains also help move raw materials into the hubs automatically. Remember, cargo tries to move to the nearest rail station or waterway for transport. By moving raw goods from outlying stretches of nothingness closer to a small city just by building a small station, your rail network gets the advantages of picking up these materials in the small cities and getting them to the hubs so they can be used in the manufacturing process. Once you have all your spokes connected to a hub, it's wise to see what freight your spokes have access to, and then buy the appropriate manufacturing buildings in the hub to process them and turn out finished goods for the other hubs and spokes.

A long connection between hubs usually has two trains. You may modify this setup to suit your needs. One train carries only express cars (passengers or mail) and is designated as an express in order to give it priority over freight trains. The second train carries only freight and is designated as the slow train.

As you build your network up, you should see a pattern. One hub city is usually connected to three to five small cities with short connections and two to three hub cities with long connections. This helps ensure that passengers, mail, and freight in your rail empire can get anywhere it needs to go while avoiding long connections between small cities as much as possible.

Most cargo in Railroad Tycoon 3 is time dependent. As time passes, the cargo becomes less valuable. Once enough time is passed, the cargo no longer has any value and disappears. The rate of decay is different among the cargo types. Perishable freight has a faster decay rate until it "spoils" than steel or finished goods. Passengers only wait around so long until they give up and no longer wish to purchase a ticket. Mail only has so many days to get to its destination before the news contained within is old and worthless.

The decay rate while within a station's influence area is slower than when it's loaded on a train. This presents the interesting of problem of what to do about servicing the trains. When a train is getting serviced, it stops entirely until service is complete. The cargo on the train still decays, though. What if there was a way to keep the cargo inside a station and off the train until service is complete?

Enter the maintenance building setup. The tutorial recommends that players place a roundhouse and water tower between major cities, about halfway. This results in many fully-loaded trains decaying their cargo while getting serviced. Instead, use your hub and spoke setup to keep service buildings off the main line so that trains can load, travel to the next hub, and unload without needing service.

Example: New York and Boston are the main hub cities in my network. Each one is connected to three spokes and there is one long connection between the hubs. A train can make the run from New York to Boston without needing service between the two hubs. Inside of each hub, I have a small fork in the track that dead-ends at a roundhouse. There is a water tower just before the roundhouse. The route I have setup for the express train between the two hubs is such:

1. New York - Load
2. Boston - Unload
3. Boston Maintenance Shed - Empty
4. Boston - Load
5. New York - Unload
6 New York Maintenance Shed - Empty

The train still gets regular service each time it visits a major hub. The advantage is that each time it gets serviced, it is empty and not letting cargo decay at an accelerated rate. Passengers stay safely with the station and its influence zone with a slower decay rate.

When building a short spoke connection to a small city, you will have to analyze the distance. Most spoke connections require no services, as the train gets serviced each time it visits the major hub. Here is an example using Boston (hub) and Lowell (spoke).

1. Lowell - Unload and Load.
2. Boston - Unload
3. Boston Maintenance Shed - Empty.
4. Boston - Load.

Again, the train is always moving when loaded, and only serviced when empty. If the spoke connection is too long for the train to make a return trip without services, then you need to check to see if it's connected to the right hub city. If there is no other alternative, then build a water tower at the spoke station itself. Like the hub setup, use a fork to do it and only let the train get serviced when it is empty.

This technique helps keep express and perishable revenue high. It also helps on those maps that have an average speed requirement for express cargo. The train should always be moving when fully loaded, and only needing to stop for a higher priority train or to unload. Servicing requires a train to stop, and a train should always be empty when servicing.

The drawback to this technique is that you will spend slightly more money on roundhouses and towers as you will need one at each hub instead of just one in between them.

There are a few times when an exception has to be made because two hubs are so far apart that a train requires service before it arrives at the next hub. During these situations, placing a roundhouse and tower at the midway point is acceptable in order to keep your train from breaking down. You might want to do some analysis, though, and make sure there isn't a shorter connection to eliminate this, or whether the train can cover the last short stretch without sand and water faster than the service delay.