Adamant102: Trains can sometimes be moneysinks.

When the track is to short, maintenance will often cost you more than the trains earns.
And do not forget the maintenance costs of trainstations, railways the other infrastructure.

For little production ( 100-400 ) it is most times better to use trucks.

I often switch to trains when there are to many vehicles on the streets.
And I try to always use trains for long distances.

In the finance window, there is a little ">" next to streets, railroads and so on. Click on the ">" to get some more infos where your money goes.

BlackHeroe: The ingame balance is a little bit terrible. You need to make a lot of money to lay new tracks buy new trains etc. - this is tried to be countered with a massive maintanance costs. So you need to adjust your workhorses wisely. Start with few more slowly - stay stable or make money, and as transportation grows with your deliveries you can use "change vehicle" or clone it tto add more.

There is a lot more possibilities to make the early money, but you need to adjust your Startup wisely. You will make minus the first months, then it needs to workout. By the way olé Trainfever had the nickname Busfever. Which is stil true - the easiest money in 1850 is take some of the existing cities and industries connected through streets, and setup Buslines in between cities and fulllfill some horse driven deliverys. Cheap and guaranteed plus.
On good occasions of a map you can do this also by ship (cargo!) or train (mostly passenger on medium-long cheap and even paths between bigger cities).