Seriously, I've made many expansions. About to make many public works. Since I can literaly afford them.
Making bells has never been any easier. Only thing I need to do though is acquire fruits.
I think money just seems so easy to get this time around because they gave so many options for getting it. Play Animal Crossing on the GC, and the hard part about amassing a fortune is the fact that the only way to make bells was the money rock and selling fish/fossils/fruit that you didn't need. From Wild World to City Folk, they added a lot of elements that made acquiring bells a bit easier. This game is pretty much the height of bell collecting methods in the entire series with fish, bugs, the money rock, tons of fruit, unique items, easier person to person interaction, more stores (when compared to the GC and WW), better balanced values and rarities, more money in trees, lots of salable gifts and surprise items (balloons, for example), more items as a whole to buy and sell, etc.
There are also lots of things to spend bells on including the increased number of items and overall customization. As such, I wouldn't say the bell acquisition to needed funds ratio is actually over the top in this game. For the casual player, there is a great balance. If you put 10 hours in within a single day though, don't be surprised that you've amassed a small fortune when putting in two hours yesterday, I got enough to pay off my first loan.
Edit: Hey all. Apparently the train station can be remodeled, but there has to be 100 visits to your town first. I don't think too many of us will ever achieve this naturally, since, frankly, there isn't a lot of reason for traveling regularly. At some point, we should organize a system based on our best guesses of visits we already had to do the most efficient system of visiting possible in order to unlock this option.
Edit 2: Looking at this, I'd say you can't really call yourself rich until you have at least 2 million bells on hand -
http://animalcrossing.wikia.com/wiki/Public_Works_Projects