Game Design Thoughts - 18xx Games - Narrow Gauge and 18xx

 

Denver & Rio Grande #318 (Narrow Gauge)
Originally purchased by the Florence & Cripple Creek Railroad and acquired by the D&RG in 1917. A  C-18 2-8-0 Consolidation.

Denver, Leadville & Gunnison #191 (Narrow Gauge)
The oldest steam locomotive in Colorado, built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1880. Another 2-8-0 Consolidation

Rio Grande Southern Galloping Goose #7 (Narrow Gauge)
One of 7 railcars built by the RGS to handle mail contracts, passengers, LCL freight and maintenance. #7 has the front end of a Pierce Arrow bus attached to a converted boxcar.

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Steam Engine #5629 (Standard Gauge)
Built by the CB&Q in their own shops in 1940. This is a 4-8-4 Northern steam locomotive. Its hard to tell from the photograph just how massive this engine really is. The drive wheels (The ones in the center the "8" in 4-8-4) are 74" in diameter!

The third piece that needs to be dealt with in any game involving Colorado railroads is how to work with the narrow gauge track tiles. They are certainly a necessity from an historical perspective. I'm only aware of two other 18xx games that have narrow gauge tiles; 1849 Sicily and 1853 India. I'm sure there are others out there that I'm not aware of.

Narrow gauge is any track where the rails are set closer together than what is the standard (or broad gauge) for the country you are researching. By the time of the transcontinental railroad period in the US standard gauge rails were set at 4' 8 1/2" by the Pacific Railroad Act of 1863. Prior to that railways often set their own gauge although most of the Northeastern US was already using what would become US Standard Gauge making it easier for railways to ship to manufacturers and consumers across each other's rails. The Southern US used, mostly, 5' and changed everything over in a two day period in 1886 (May 31st - June 1st) to the established US standard gauge. In the US most narrow gauge rails were typically 36", but there were other "narrow gauges" as well, for instance in Maine 24" was very common. What didn't happen was the development of a nation wide narrow gauge system so the only way to get shipments to and from areas served only by narrow gauge railroads required transfer points, typically found at major terminals, in the region. That should be enough background to start.

In the 18xx series a striped line is currently being used to designate narrow gauge track and a solid white line for dual gauge track. Standard gauge track continues to use the solid black line. While I'm not fond of the look it will do for now. I don't think there is any real reason to even bother with dual gauge at least as far as a Colorado 18xx is concerned. Since it really only appears at transfer locations which are typically located near major terminals, Denver being the prime example, it doesn't need to be represented in the game. All cities could be considered as transfer points and the entire tile considered to be dual gauged.

One of the main reasons to use narrow gauge is the reduction of cost when laying the track and the ability for the smaller equipment (about 3/4s of the size of standard gauge equipment) to snake around tighter curves. Cost of the narrow gauge locomotives and rolling stock is also much reduced from standard gauge equipment. The downside is you are moving much less in those smaller freight cars so the revenue stream is also, potentially less, than a standard gauge railroad. Why not do both then? It would seem logical that the best thing for a major carrier to do would be to run both narrow and standard gauge, transfer from your own NG freight cars to your SG freight cars and benefit from the best of both worlds. Yet only a couple of railways in Colorado did just that; General Palmers' Denver & Rio Grande and the Colorado & Southern controlled by the CB&Q. I'm not quite sure as to the reasoning there but hopefully a little research will show the light.

On the map the dollar value to lay the initial tile in a hex will be printed on the map. I'll either show both the cost for NG and SG or just show the SG and you would have to calculate the NG cost. The other cost that could occur is if you upgrade the NG tile to a SG tile. There will be a cost associate with the upgrade as it not only required the replacement of the rails but often a certain amount of re-routing to increase the radius of the curves and decrease the grade. In a more standard 18xx game the cost to upgrade a tile to the next color, and enhanced rail network, is free even if the original tile had a cost associated with it. That should probably not be the case for tile upgrades in the mountains. There is a lot of engineering associated with track improvements and its doubly so in the mountains. The leads directly back to how the financing of the game is going to work. 1853 describes itself as the game for engineers who are tired of the financiers and it features a pretty simple stock market to reflect that I can see a Colorado version being very similar in that respect. The companies are going to need a lot more money for the payment of track which will likely slow the progression of the trains. Slowing the train progression is not necessarily a bad thing it just requires a different kind of playing style.

Another aspect that I haven't touched on is the restricted tile set. Almost every 18xx game has restrictions on what tiles can be used and there is a standard chart out there that show the potential upgrades. The number of each type of tile is driven by the tile set in each game, although there are a couple that say you can have unlimited straight sections or unlimited curves (both of which are, along with the sharp curve, the most basic yellow tile available). For Colorado I see a very restricted set for both the NG and the SG tiles, although there are likely to be more NG tiles than standard gauge. You want enough tiles for the game to play well but not quite enough that a player can always do exactly what they want. That balance is hard to achieve and there are a couple of a discussions about it. I tend towards a more restrictive set myself, but there are certainly those that would rather have an unlimited set of tiles and always be able to have the tile they need available. There are whole game strategies based around the tile restrictions.

Right now I don't see any reason to change the formatting on the NG tiles although I would like to. The one thing that has been rolling around in my mind is perhaps the introduction of a half tile. That will depend on how the map comes out, but there are several areas where different carriers have routes down neighboring valleys with impassable terrain between them. A half tile would solve that problem quite neatly. Something to keep in mind as the map comes together.

As I work my way through these concepts it really begins to show who all the different parts must come together to work. It does seem like the key place to start is with the board. Getting the board into some something that tiles can be thrown on to is going to drive a lot of the other parts; tiles, financing and companies.