1862: The Pacific Railway Act

The year is 1862. Abraham Lincoln has passed the Pacific Railway Act which will connect the United States' coasts via the first Transcontinental Railroad. You are a wry investor and a shrewd negotiator. 4 new railroad companies have amassed a large amount of capital to accomplish this task set forth by Lincoln. These companies need businessmen like you, to negotiate land grants for them to connect the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. This is where you come in, to help these companies expand and develop their business.

Players will invest in 4 companies by building tracks for them. To do this, they will buy land grants (cards) in 4 colors, numbered 1 through 6, each color matching spaces on the map board. To be valid, the land grants must be played in order of construction, of the right color and must be in ascending or descending order numerically.

Once built, the track will give a bonus to the player (from the company's own cash), one bonus to the company (from the bank), raise the company's value and the player gets a stock from the company.

At the end of each round, each company needs to pay its expenses: 1$ for each city in its network.

If a company has no more cash in its reserve, it will have to lower its company value to pay for those expenses.

Game ends when one of these 5 conditions is met:

• one company reaches 100 on the company value track
• one company has no more stock
• one company has no more tracks to build new rails
• one company reaches 10 cities in it's network
• one company connects the east and west coasts

Stock value is calculated and each player gets a payout. Players evaluate their Bonus cards, dealt at the beginning of the game. The player with the most money wins.

Available from the designer