Railroad and Stations
Great Western Trail's railroad: moving your engine forward and back, turnouts, upgrading the ten train stations, station master tiles and the end of the track.
Moving your engine
An engine action moves your engine forward up to the number it allows — on most buildings, as many spaces as you have engineers.
- Except for the starting space, one engine per space: skip any space with another engine as if it were not there.
- Each turnout (the side track of a station) counts as one extra space between the two track spaces it leaves from: from the switch you may go to the next numbered space or into the turnout.
- You may move fewer spaces, or none — but once you stop, the rest of the movement is lost.
Moving backwards
Some actions make you move your engine back as their cost. Skip occupied spaces as usual; you may stop on a turnout and upgrade its station. As a cost, you can never move fewer spaces than required, and you cannot take such an action while your engine is on the starting space. The engine always faces forward.
Upgrading stations
When your engine stops on a station’s turnout, you may upgrade that station, once per game:
- Pay the upgrade cost beside it (2 to 8 dollars).
- Place a disc from your player board on its station space (on top of any other discs). As with cities, a disc from a dark-corner space fits only a dark-corner station; clearing it unlocks what it covered (disc spaces).
- If a station master tile is still beside it, you may take it: give up a hired worker from the rightmost filled space of any of your rows, put that worker where the tile was (for the rest of the game) and keep the tile. A freed space with an immediate action works again for the next worker you hire there.
Only the moment you upgrade gives you the chance at the station master. Other players may upgrade the same station later; the tile goes only to the first.
| Station (near space) | Cost | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 8 | 2 | 1 |
| 10 | 4 | 2 |
| 13 | 4 | 2 |
| 16 | 6 | 3 |
| 21 | 8 | 5 |
| 25 | 7 | 6 |
| 29 | 6 | 7 |
| 33 | 5 | 8 |
| 39 (end) | 3 | 9 |
The first five stations carry a station master tile at the start. From the 16 onwards they take only dark-corner discs.
Station master tiles
The upper half is either an immediate action (use it or lose it) or a permanent certificate (+1 breeding value every income, for the rest of the game). The lower half scores at the end (tiles).
The end of the track
When your engine reaches space 39 its movement ends; you may upgrade that station as usual. Then you must move it back at least one space to any free space (even a turnout) and gain 3 dollars — you may use them at once to upgrade the station of the turnout you reached.
Building 9a’s extraordinary delivery and building 9b’s upgrade behind your engine are explained with the buildings.