Condition: New
 
Publisher: Arclight Games
Designer: Hisashi Hayashi & Simone Luciani
 
Description:
Railway Boom is a board game set in Japan’s early Meiji era, when the first railway line between Shimbashi and Yokohama set off a nationwide rail craze that local entrepreneurs and later powerful tycoons turned into large railway corporations during the Taishō and Shōwa eras. Players take on the role of these tycoons, building and managing their own railway empires while competing for the most renown, balancing resource management against the growth of a network that connects cities across Japan. The game lasts four rounds of six phases each, in which players bid for priority on Locomotives and Carriages, for the right to expand their network and build stations in new cities, for Development Cards that improve their engines and grant special abilities, and for Objective multipliers that can sharply raise their final score. They also collect income based on their company’s development and operate their trains by loading cargo, spending coal, and activating Carriages.
 
Components: 
1 Game Board
4 Player Boards
191 Cards
151 Tiles
240 Wooden Tokens
2 Rulebooks (EN, JA)
 
Recommended Age: 14+
Average Play Time: 60-120 Minutes
Players: 2-4
Genres: Economic | Industry | Trains
Mechanisms: Auction | Income | Network Building
Release Date: 2026