I've had a few spare moments this weekend around Mother's Day (complete with visits, cooking and gardening) to work on the next map for Bindle Rails.  It will be set in Colorado and Utah and will follow the lead of the Eastern Canada expansion.  All of the charts and commodities from BR3:EC are used - just the map is different.  There are a few rule changes, namely that there is a chance for all the resources to be placed at the beginning of the game and there is only one chance to add and one chance to subtract each turn.  Other than that, game play is identical.

The map itself, however, is a little bit more difficult.  I've been pleasantly surprised by it.  The map is a lot more mountainous and is generally separated into the front range of Denver, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Cheyenne and Salt Lake City and Provo to the west.  Ore, Coal and Lumber are scattered in the mountains - Grain is in a couple river areas and to the east.  The demand for Grain is internally at some wayward unnamed towns.  The Ore,Coal and Lumber are spread out for demand as well.  Loads that were easy to transport around Eastern Canada need bigger trains (with higher maintenance costs) to make points.  Less cities make the game harder as well.

The topography of the region is different enough from BR:IMR that there are often two different forks that look pretty inviting to build through.  Depending on how the resource picture looks, either way is viable.  It comes down to a little bit of luck and some gutsy play to win the thing - which hasn't happened yet.  I got 28 points the first time through and got booted out of my second game because I wasn't able to turn a profit in the third turn so I automatically lost (even though I kept playing it out and ended up with 48 points - so close!). 

More playtesting this week.  Some more maps will be worked on as well and I'm hoping to come up with some true 2-player rules for this version of the game.  From here, I may try a run of self-publishing the expansion or move on to something else.