Eurorails

Lore & Background

Eurorails was released in 1990 by Mayfair Games as a spin-off of Empire Builder, designed by Darwin Bromley, Steven Courtemanche, and Larry Roznai. It is part of the 'Crayon Rails' games or Empire Builder series, which includes British Rails, Australian Rails, Russian Rails, Iron Dragon, Lunar Rails, and Martian Rails. Players start with $50 million European Currency Units (ECU), three Demand cards, and one freight Loco card showing speed and load capacity.

Reader's Guide

Gameplay consists of two parts per turn: transport and building. In the transport phase, players move, load, and unload trains, pay fees, and collect payment for deliveries; this phase is skipped for the first two rounds. Trains may use a player's own track freely or pay ECU $4 million to operate on another player's track. Demand cards specify three goods, a requesting city, and payment; delivering the goods discards the card and the player draws another. Event cards trigger immediately and are replaced. In the building phase, players may spend up to ECU $20 million to build tracks or upgrade trains. Upgrades progress from freight Loco to fast freight or heavy freight, then to superfreight. Track costs vary by terrain: ordinary dot ECU $1 million, mountain ECU $2 million, alpine ECU $5 million, small/medium city ECU $3 million, major city ECU $5 million, with additional costs for rivers (ECU $2 million) and ocean inlets or lakes (ECU $3 million). Ferry ports cost ECU $1-5 million. The game ends when a player amasses $250 million and has railways connecting seven of the eight major cities.

Did You Know?

• Building across a river adds an additional 2 million ECU to the cost.
• The first player to amass 250 million ECU and connect seven of eight major cities wins.