An Illustrated History
of Rail Baron

We can only surmise that the designers demonstrated their game to the industry in the hopes of finding a publisher. At that time, there existed but two boardgames with a train theme: Dispatcher (1961) and B&O/C&O (1969) distributed by the Avalon Hill Game Company. The publishing/entertainment industry is notoriously reluctant to invest in unestablished areas/themes, consequently with so few train games in existance, apparently no one wanted to take a chance on the Ericksons' invention.

It was billed as "The Informative NEW travel game of OLD-time railroading." (Fortunately, the Ericksons were better at game design than slogan writing.) For a first-time effort, the components of the resulting boardgame were surprisingly refined and professional.

The single-piece board unfolded to reveal a map of the United States on which routes of 28 historic railroads were traced. The image at right shows a portion of the map.

It is easy to see the similarities to what would become Rail Baron. The edge of the board is encircled with heralds/logos of assorted RRs...but, strangely, none of these RRs are used during game play. A 1950s era Rand-McNally map of US railroads was encircled by heralds; perhaps it was the inspiration for this design.

The rules of BOXCARS vary from those of Rail Baron in several ways. For example, BOXCARS has no restriction in the reuse of routes: this allows players to circle along the same track as long as desired. BOXCARS also allows a player to trade, sell or auction a RR at any time during the game. Furthermore, BOXCARS lacks the Express and Superchief locomotive upgrades that Rail Baron contains.

To choose destinations, BOXCARS employs a spinner, shown at left (click the image to enlarge it). The spinner consists of a cardboard square and a clear plastic circle; you spin the circle and see where the pointer ends up. Destination probability is proportional to the width of the "slice of pie" allocated to that destination. For example, it is easy to see that Atlanta is more likely a destination than Louisville. Unfortunately, the spinner does not work well because it tends to build up static electricity and can stop on the line between two choices. When creating Rail Baron, AH converted this spinner to a dice-driven lookup chart that, for the most part, preserves these original destination probabilities.

Here are the components of the game:

• tri-fold board with USA map
• play money in 500, 1000, 5000, 10000 and 20000 denominations
• 28 railroad title deed cards
• spinner for choosing region and destination
• a "Mileage Chart" (payoff chart) seen here at upper right
• rules
• a list of railroads and their prices
• 6 plastic pawns and two dice (BOXCARS does not need a third die)

AH scaled down the game's physical size to match the "bookshelf" style of many of its other titles, and released it as Rail Baron in 1977. Shown here is the first edition box which is recognizable by the single, large picture on its cover.

To play Rail Baron, you move your token (train) along the RRs of your choice toward a destination city which you have been assigned. Upon arriving, you collect a payment, and may make a purchase. You can purchase one RR, or upgrade your train's locomotive (to a faster model).

If your train moves along a RR owned by an opponent, you must pay that person a track use fee. Therefore, the main challenge of the game is to purchase RRs that 1) connect into a network that gives you access to most of the important destination cities, and 2) prevent your opponents from doing likewise. To win, you must accumulate $200,000 then return to your home (starting) city.

During play, when you purchase a RR, you are given the deed to that property. The image at left shows one of the deeds that comes with AH's Rail Baron. The image also shows a custom replacement deed that includes a map to illustrate the area served by the RR (more information about replacement parts).

To help speed up the game, AH developer Richard Hamblen modified the BOXCARS rules to include an option to upgrade your locomotive. Each player starts the game with a Standard locomotive. It lets you roll 2D6 (two six-sided dice) to determine how far your train moves that turn. If you roll 12, you can also roll a bonus 1D6. Instead of purchasing a RR, you can upgrade your locomotive. The Express ($4,000) lets you roll/move the bonus die if you roll any doubles during your normal turn. The Superchief ($40,000) lets you roll/move the bonus die every turn.

The average distance moved per turn is: Standard: 7.1, Express: 7.6, and Superchief 10.5. Knowing the best time in the game to upgrade is a skill learned by experience.

A revised (i.e. second) edition was released sometime about 1984 (anyone have an exact year?). The second edition box has multiple pictures on the cover (as depicted here), and some dots along the NorthEast corridor were changed on the map.

In Empire Builder you move your train along routes on a USA map in order to collect payments. Unlike Rail Baron, you spend money actually building track, through mountains and over rivers, with a trusty crayon rather than buying existing RRs. As in Rail Baron, you can upgrade your train to a faster model. If you use someone else's route, you must pay them. The first person to reach $250,000 wins, but there is no exciting "declaration and race home" feature.

Empire Builder was the first in a series of such games. Mayfair has released other very similar games that play on maps of the British Isles, Europe, Australia, Japan and India. There is also a computer version.

It was a search to discover the best network of RRs that in the mid-1980s drew Paul Van Bloem to write "Rail Baron's Aide" (RBA) for the Macintosh with help from Steve Okonski. RBA assisted with in-game duties (rolling dice, randomizing destinations, etc.) and helped players select RRs to purchase. Furthermore, it could analyze each player's network and report how many cities the player accessed, and how many he controlled (monopolized). RBA was never released to the public.

Many other people created similar Rail-Baron-assistant-type programs, but no one had managed to create a program that would actually play the game. By today's standards, the typical desktop computers of the mid-1980s were underpowered and had limited graphics capabilities. A competent "Artificial Intelligent" Rail Baron program was still years away.

Chuck Foster was the Rail Baron champion at the first Avaloncon. In subsequent years, Chuck served as GameMaster for the Rail Baron tournament, and earned commendations as one of the best Avaloncon GMs. Under his watch, the Rail Baron tournament grew to 100 participants in 1998.

Avaloncon has evolved into the present day World Boardgaming Championships. Pictured: 2001 WBC Rail Baron Finalists from a field of 56. From left to right: Mark McCandless, Eyal Mozes, Steve Okonski, Stan Buck, Chuck Foster, Inger Henning

In 1997, Steve contacted Avalon Hill and demonstrated the RBP prototype to them. They opted to not publish the game. Steve did not know that at the time, the AH game division was being shopped around by its parent corporation, Monarch-Avalon, and thus was not actively putting efforts into new games.

Fortunately, Steve was able to secure permission from Avalon Hill to distribute the computer version. The result is the shareware program and alternate game maps you can find at the Rail Baron Fanatics site.

Initial speculation was that Hasbro purchased AH to obtain its boardgame designs for the purposes of converting some of them into computer form. So far Hasbro has released updated versions of Acquire, Diplomacy and some other titles, plus has indicated it will republish additional titles in the coming years. Will Rail Baron be one of them? Stay tuned...

In a surprise move in 2000, Hasbro sold computer version rights to Infogrames, a French company closely associated with Atari. In 2005 Infogrames sold back the digital rights of games to Hasbro. This has further muddied the waters as to if and when we will see commercial computer versions of various Avalon Hill boardgames.

With help from many beta testers, Steve added Web support to RBP and released it as part of version 2 early in the year 2000. Thanks to this feature, friends and family members that used to play the boardgame but who are now separated by distance are enjoying the game once again. As many as 6 people at once have connected from various parts of the world to participate in a match.

Hasbro's enthusiasm to re-release AH titles appears to be waning, so there is some doubt if we will see a third edition of Rail Baron. Still, the game's popularity should put it near the top of their list. Only time will tell. If you'd like to encourage Hasbro, write to them at avalonhill@hasbro.com.

Does the arrangement of dots on the ATC map look familiar? It should, because as for Rail Baron, the dots and connections are based on the routes of actual US railroads. (ATC picture courtesy boardgamegeek).

The similarities don't end there. To play ATC, participants move their trains/cars to a series destinations chosen at random. Dice rolls determine how far they move. If doubles are rolled, the player gets a bonus roll. The winning player is the first to make a trip from one coast to the other, and then back home. And, no two players may have the same starting city! That explains where Rail Baron got its "no two players may have the same home city" rule, a rule which made sense in ATC but is rather pointless in Rail Baron.

Of course, Rail Baron contains many additional elements, such as RR purchasing, route choices to minimize payments to other players, auctions, the rover play, etc. But, it seems like a good bet that Rail Baron's roots date back to the 1800s! The game we still love to play has been enjoyed in one form or another for parts of three centuries, a claim few other board games can make.