1846 The Race for the Midwest (VA)

1846 is an 18xx game set in the Midwestern United States.

Differences from other 18xx games include scaling the number of corporations, private companies, and bank size to the number of players, fewer restrictions on actions such as raising money and using private company powers, the initial distribution of private companies, and paying for virtually all track builds.

1846 – the midwest railroad boom has gone bust, leaving in its wake hundreds of failed local railroads.  Sensing opportunity in the economic vacuum, five large eastern railroads ( the New York Central, Erie, Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Ohio, and Grand Trunk out of Canada) seek dominance west of the Alleghenies.  Can you, as a nineteenth century tycoon, knit together these profitable rairoads with the midwestern remnants to form the most profitable rail network stretching all the way to Chicago or St Louis?

Players begin by drafting private companies and launching public railroads.  Play alternates between buying and selling stocks and running the railroads.

Each railroad – with its President, the majority stock holder, making its decisions – lays track, builds stations, runs routes, and possibly pays dividends to increase its stock price and give its shareholders cash for the next stock round.

A railroad can instead retain its earnings to buy bigger and better trains.  New trains – representing technological progress – cause older ones to go obsolete, with each President having to make up the difference if a rairoad doesn’t have enough cash to replace its trains.

Can you invest wisely, balancing your railroad’s cash needs while building the best stock portfolio?