hello all. i ve read your post and also steam community post about TransFev.
in accordance with good practicise, i fail to growth my company in hard mode. i loose party as soon i need to change very old vehicule.
so , who had ever win the success "1 billion dollar in hard mode" but especially how did you do it?
thank a lot

There really isn's an easy answer to this because success in hard mode relies on a little bit of luck and a lot of micromanagement.

Pick your map carefully. A flat map is best and make sure you have oil-fuel and farm-food chains close to at least two cities, three cities is better.

Try not to take out any loans and pay off the starting one as soon as you can without ruining your economy.

Beyond that the only advice I can give is to avoid trains until you have a steady cash flow and enough money the bank to build them without taking out a loan.
Use trucks but set up your lines carefully so that you can haul cargo in both directions. An empty truck is a truck that's losing money.
Set up bus lines to grow your cities but watch them carefully. They probably won't be profitable but make to make sure they aren't losing too much money.

Other than that, take it slow, gradually grow your empire, watch every line carefully, and replace your vehicles early.

And no ships or planes, they're basically useless in hard mode.

I agree. map need a lot of luck to provide good industry condition. And train are already deficit even they are at maximum load. Passenger train provide a little gain but there replacement is too cost.
i 'll try to run only truck. Thank.

My most profitable lines are usually trains transporting planks. Look for a forest close to machines factory. Now find a saw mill that's half a map away. Look for a flat ground straight line connection. To maximize profit you want distance. That's the counter intuitive part. Trains on this line will transport logs one way and return with planks for machines factory.
Machine factory will process planks into tools. Use trucks to deliver them to a city. Later on you can connect your machines factory with steel.
I've found hard mode to be quite boring. You need to wait a long time before each expansion. So be patient :)

yes, its not enjoying to play hard...wait and wait.
so i finished to performed 1 B $ in year 2366. But no award for this! wtf? sucess still not checked! grrrr.