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Someone asked for a quick description of the rules for Empire Builder
(which is the same game as British Rails, except that Empire Builder
uses a map of the U.S. and Canada, while British Rails uses a map of
England, Scotland, and Wales).

The map shows cities in the countries involved.  Each city produces
two or three commodities.

Players draw "request" cards.  Each card shows three cities that
are requesting a train load of a particular commodity.

Players have money to build tracks between cities.  Tracks are
built by drawing on the map with crayon (the map is plasticized so
that the crayon can be wiped off at the end of the game).  Players
also have a train that runs on your track.  At the beginning of
the game, your train can start anywhere; after that, your train
always moves along existing track.

Your train picks up commodities at cities where the goods are
produced and delivers them to cities that request the goods on
a "request" card.  You get money for each such delivery, and with
this money you can build more track.  At the very beginning of
the game, you probably only have enough money to build from one
production centre to one delivery site, so you'd better choose
carefully -- you can get into real nasty corners if you spend
all your money on one contract and don't have enough cash to build
track needed to fulfill another contract.

After a while, you have track over most of the map and can concentrate
on racking up cash, upgrading your train, and so on.  The winner
is the first one to have track going to a number of major centres
(three in British Rails, five in Empire Builder) and a set amount
of money.

Disasters happen occasionally: snow, floods, derailments, wildcat
strikes.  They add some variety to the game, but are only rarely
significant to the game's outcome.

Very little inter-personal conflict in the game.  As an example,
there is a bit of a contest over who gets the cheapest passes through
the Rocky Mountains in Empire Builder, but this is a civilized game
and trains don't fire guns on each other.  Playing time, about three
hours with four people.  Maximum of six players.

				Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo