Part 36: 1980-1985: Sloggers and Sprinters

1980-1985: Sloggers and Sprinters
Locomotion Soundtrack - Smooth Running/Locomotion Soundtrack - Traffic Jam


Click here to name a vehicle!






Perhaps it's just Scrooge getting old, but these days we spend most of our time running the company instead of breaking new ground. Even Burgundy doesn't seem to be doing all that much. Nevertheless, we do connect a new rail service from Clevedon farms to the Papatoetoe brewery. After all, there'd have been no point in saving it if we didn't stand to profit from it, would there?


Almost all of this update is spent replacing old vehicles and updating route manifests. Over here, we take some trucks from the queues at the saturated Bombay grain farm and put them to work on the route on the other side of Tuakau.




The last two airports are upgraded. These BAE whisperjets cost almost as much as a 737 and only carry 80 people, but this means they can fly more frequently from our low traffic Waiheke Island airport, as they don't sit as long while waiting for passengers.


In the Maritime division, everything is well past replacement age. Bulkers and Hovercraft replace general cargo ships, diesel ferries and older hovercraft. I also discover a route that hasn't paid since 1965, when I shifted the docks and failed to update the orders!






The new ships are 6km/h faster, a big difference when your maximum speed is 50km/h. This makes significant cuts to journey times and therefore profits, as seen in these before/afters.


And it appears we've provoked Evelynn Eggburt into Building a 70km long bridge!


And now it's time for the News!




These actually cost more than the Hovercraft to run, while carrying less passengers! we get some all the same.


All our buses are replaced with one of the new bus models. Our trams have also been replaced with the 1978 model.




The Factory in New Lynn closes down after decades of neglect, and is replaced by one near our starting point in Otaua.






Colour photography hits the newspapers!


Pity all it has to display is the infamous sprinters.


Unfortunately it's just a feature of the late game that there is a constant cycle of replacement and tweaking. The bright side is that things are running better than ever before, and everything more than five years old has been replaced. Hopefully this gives us some breathing room to try new ideas before the game concludes, especially as so many names remain unclaimed!