Southern Rails

About this board game

Southern Rails is a stock-and-route board game for 3–5 players, with games lasting about 60 minutes. Set on a map of the southeastern United States, it combines stock selection with strategic track placement and shared railroad scoring.

Before play begins, players spend two rounds selecting stocks from two of the six available companies. During each turn, a player places a track cube for one company in which they own stock. A company’s first cube may go on any hex; every later cube must connect to another cube of the same color.

Most hexes can hold one to three cubes, while Atlanta follows a different rule. Cities appear in four colors, and placing a railroad’s cube in a city increases that company’s revenue by $1–4, depending on the city’s color. Building a network therefore shapes both the map and the value of its stock.

When a company places its tenth cube, all railroads score points according to several criteria:

• Highest revenue
• Fewest shares owned
• Most cubes on the map
• Most cities of a particular color in its network

Ties score no points for that category. Each player then gains points equal to the points scored by the railroads in which they own stock, linking personal results to the performance of multiple companies.

After each scoring round, player order is reassigned and everyone selects one additional stock before track placement resumes. Following the fourth scoring round, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins. In Southern Rails, every cube can extend a network, increase revenue, or influence a race for valuable scoring categories.