Ride the Rails

To set up, place the game board in the center of the playing area. Place one passenger token on each city hex with a city icon. Sort the locomotive pieces by color and place them beside the board. Find the seven colored pieces and place them in their matching spaces in the bottom right corner of the board. Each player chooses a color, taking the matching player board and three player discs. Place two of your discs on the zero spaces of the money track on the left side of the board. Randomly place your remaining disc into the first available space of the turn order track. Finally, place the round marker on the round one space.

In Ride the Rails, you and the other players will be investing in railways and connecting cities with the goal of moving passengers around the country. Moving passengers will earn money for you and the other players. The player with the most money by the end of the game will win. In case of a tie for the most money, the tied players share the victory.

The game is played over a series of rounds, with each round consisting of three phases: Take a Share, Build Track, and Ride the Rails. In the Take a Share phase, players take turns in reverse order of the turn order track, selecting one available locomotive for the current round and placing it on their player map as a share. In the Build Track phase, players take turns in normal turn order, adding a certain number of locomotives (based on player count) to the board from their supply, adhering to placement restrictions for cities and mountains. In the Ride the Rails phase, players again take turns in normal turn order, choosing a passenger to move along a continuous path of locomotives to another city.

When a passenger is moved, players earn money based on the number of links (connections between cities) the passenger traveled through for each color of locomotive. Each player with stock in those colors earns $1 per link per stock they own. The player who moved the passenger also earns an additional amount of money equal to the white marker's position on the scoring track. Bonuses can also be earned for placing trains in Chicago ($2), continuing a track into specific cities ($5), or completing a transcontinental line ($8 or $12 depending on the connection type).

The game concludes after six rounds. After the third phase of the sixth round is completed, the game ends. Players then compare their total money. The player who has accumulated the most money wins the game. If there is a tie for the most money, all tied players share the victory.