In railroad tycoon 2, you don't have to set up just one company and be done with it. You are an investor, which means you can set up many different companies and benefit from the rewards they bring.

There are essentially two reasons. One is diseconomies to scale- once you have a large company it becomes cumbersome and difficult to run. I have once had a company with 400 trains, it is impossible to ensure each train is making the maximum possible profit. The other reason is because inevitably you will be a minority shareholder, and if you pay out dividends, much of that money goes to your competeing investors rather than you. If you set up your own company, and you have enough personal wealth, you can put only your own money in meaning you will fully own the company and kee all the rewards just for yourself.

Be warned, if you resign your chairmanship of a company, the railroad tycoon 2 artificial intelligence will take over. This is bad news. The artificial intelligence is really appalling at running things, it believes every station supports passengers and mail, it will transport commodities to stations which don't demand them, and even if all your track is electrified, they will only ever buy diesels. So if you planning to hand your railway over to the computer mind, there are a few things you should do. Get rid of any stations which aren't in a town, because the AI sends passengers/mail to all stations. As for electrified track, if you have any, make sure you buy electric locomotives just before you resign, because the AI won't bother replacing them with more expensive diesels for a while, and in any event, you can always come back and keep them electric

When you decide to resign from your company, you can start up another one. Then if you want you can build, or you can resign immediately and let the artificial intelligence do the work. If you repeat this process a few times you can own a lot of companies, although you won't be able to do this just after you have started the game due to lack of money. From time to time you can assume chairmanship of companies just to check up on everything. Although do do this make sure you have at least 50% of the stock of the various companies. Don't forget that if there are other investors if you sell any of your stock they might buy it, in which case there would be no way of getting it back. High dividends are key for this type of strategy, so make sure that all the companies are paying the maximum dividend. This way you can get rich, very rich.

There is an interesting feature in railroad tycoon 2, that regardless of who runs the trains, revnue earned goes to whoever owns the track over which the trains have run, and if it is more than one company, it is divided in proportion to how much track is used. Now this can be used to your advantage, provided you have a reasonable amount of personal wealth. Set up one company, and when choosing how much to accept for investors, make sure you put in at least 50% of the money. Then build lots of track and stations, don't worry if you don’t build trains - you won't be needing them. Now, set up a second company, this time, put in a minimal amount of your own cash, and maximise the amount by other investors. Once you have set up the company, sell of all your shares in the second company.