Railway Rivals

Crayon railroading at its lightest. German edition (Dampfross) is absolutely beautiful.

Railway building game with train races at the end. Always found all that felt tip drawing rather messy. Game works and generally close results.

An inferior ancestor to the modern day crayon games, hence no need to have this in the collection anymore. The reward for efficient track here is simply to be the first to build to various cities and then improve your odds of winning the end-game race, though if dice go against you, too bad, game over. I much prefer the newer challenges of finding time-efficient deliveries, which make more thematic sense as well.

One of families most played games, we have gone through four sets of this already! Only downside is the luck involved in the racing...

Used to be my favourite train game. The race stage now seems very laboured.

Played the original paper versions purchased direct from the designer. Had to cover them by hand with plastic to draw on them.

A great game. Very playable. I played in, and ran, lots of postal games in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was probably the 2nd most popular postal game, after Diplomacy. I own 20 or so of the original maps, and my kids all played it as they grew up. Still a regular to play when we get together at Christmas, etc.

This didn't quite do it for me, which is a shame because it looks and feels like it ought to be a very likeable game. I felt overly handicapped by poor dice rolls/turn order in the initial building phase, watching as others to beat me to contested routes and cities (boo hoo).