Gold is faster than Bronze, since it ends the scenario early. There's definitely some RNG involved, since you probably need an early 'Prosperity' phase to get the bonds needed (also RNG: spawns in Aswan, industry spawns along the route, and avoiding getting booted from the company due to consecutive years of increasingly negative income).

You only need two trains of four cars each to make the trip, I mistakenly did five-cars. This would be an easy way to take off some seconds. (the third train was a backup in case of robbery, but you could get rid of that, too)

Picked +70k and +1 credit rating (instead of +15% train speed, or +10% passenger revenue and -20% station turnaround time). The train speed option is probably faster than what I did if you get a 'Booming' economy.

General stuff used: -You can turn the speed up or down before starting the level with the + and - keys -Esc exits windows -You can turn off trees and turn graphics like trains and rails to visible from the outermost zoom level (this is less great in some scenarios, since it obscures the layout of plantations) -I used Livesplit, recording with OBS, Windows XP in Virtual Machine, Railroad Tycoon II Platinum Edition.