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Railways of the World (2009) is the new edition of the base game for Eagle Games' popular Railways of the World series, first published as Railroad Tycoon in 2005. It reimplements the original game with several improvements.
Revisit the early days of the Age of Steam as you begin with a locomotive (the venerable John Bull, the first locomotive to run in North America) and a vision (your Tycoon "mission" card). From there, build your budding railroad network into a vast empire. Connect New York to Chicago, earn the most money, develop bigger and faster locomotives and maybe even span North America and build the Transcontinental Railway!
Multiple expansions featuring different maps are available. Railways of the World is the new base game for the system and includes the engine placards, railroad tiles, train tokens, money, bonds, and other items that are needed in almost all the Railways of the World series. A gameboard depicting the eastern half of the United States is included in the base game, as well as a mounted map of Mexico.
This game is preceded by the designer's other Winsome train games: Age of Steam, Australian Railways, Volldampf, New England Railways, Veld Spoorweg, Lancashire Railways, and Ferrocarriles Pampas. Railroad Tycoon was the result of a collaboration with Glenn Drover, in which the mechanics and game-play of Martin Wallace's Age of Steam were simplified and streamlined and attractive over-produced components were added, in order to make Railroad Tycoon more appealing to less hardcore gamers and more accessible to a wider audience.
A revised reprint was published at the end of 2010 which made some component improvements, such as the addition of Railroad Operation cards for the Mexico map.
Complete series overview - The Railways of the World Series: Introducing the family members of the ideal medium-weight train game
Note: The RailRoad Tycoon board itself is gigantic (about 36x45 inches, 91x114 cm) and requires a huge table or playing on the floor.
Similar to:
Steam
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the first time where I thought of the whole idea of form over function where you could not figure out how to play because they just wanted to look so pretty that they didn't actually put on the board how to play.
- It's you move you you you turn over a piece, something shows up in the grid, you move over. There's multiple game plays. It's just such a satisfying, entertaining game.
References (from this video)
- Expandable elements (Mexico and Eastern USA) add variety
- Fun with more players
- Production quality is nice
- Random goods at start create variability
- Baron cards offer bonus points for completing conditions
- Room for house rules and expansions
- Rulebook needs major work; more examples and images would help
- City colors do not consistently match the goods cubes; blue and purple are confusing
- End-game pacing can feel abrupt; players may wish for longer play sessions
- Rail transport logistics, city development, and intercity goods delivery financed via loans
- Two boards representing Mexico and Eastern USA with optional reach to Western USA
- Economic strategy with bidding, expansion, and scoring through connectivity and deliveries
- Railway Tycoon
- Ruin Wars
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Auction/bidding for turn order — Players bid to obtain the first-player marker each round, which influences access to initial funds and actions.
- Deliver goods and score — Deliver goods cubes to cities; points on the score track scale with distance and train level.
- End-game condition — Game ends when all empty city markers are placed; marker counts vary with player count.
- End-of-round income and loan payments — At the end of each round, players receive income based on their score and must pay bond costs.
- Loans/Bonds (unrepaid) — Loans are taken and never repaid; bonds incur payments and impact end-game scoring.
- Operations cards — Draw and play operation cards to affect actions, movement, or scoring conditions.
- Random goods setup — Goods cubes are placed randomly at the start, creating variability and planning considerations.
- Track construction — Players build tracks between cities; costs depend on terrain and location.
- Train upgrades — Upgrading trains extends delivery reach and enables scoring from greater distances.
- Urbanization — Gray cities can be urbanized into colored cities for $10,000, adding new goods and scoring potential.
- Using other players' tracks — You may use routes on others’ tracks, but points accrue to the track owner for those connections.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- The expandable elements are great
- The colors used to print the cities on the board do not match the colored good cubes
- The rule book needs major work and should include more examples and images
- We had fun with it and are giving it a 7 on 10
- you can also use other players tracks but as long as the first connection is from your color
- the production quality is nice
- they need to fix the rule book and reprint the board so that everything matches correctly
- it's the same feeling you get when playing ruin Wars you just wish you had more time
- we like the randomness of the goods at the start of the game and that it leaves a lot of room for house rules and expansions