I start most games by connecting towns with eachother by stage coach. Typically 20 stage coaches per connection is enough to get a nice income of about 100K – 300K per line. I will build around 10 lines the first decade, so once it’s 1860 I’ll have about 200 stage coaches running arround. And since they tend to buch up within the town centers because all cross roads and stops, it’s a rather bussy center.
Once I have a decent income, I’ll start building train connections between the town. Once a line is set up, and the train is running, I will abandon the stage coach line that is connecting those two towns. The train will have quite fast a decent public, because of the existing demand of traffic by people to go over there. So the train will be profitable within the first year.
The situation you saw is one where I just had installed the first train to another town, but still had 3 other stage coach lines running to 3 other towns. Add to this the internal tram system to get people to the railway station, and you have what you saw: dozens of people waiting for a stage coach or tram.
Javis, thank you for your feedback. 😉