After a little soul searching, I decided I want to pursue a dual track with Open Rails.  I really would like to see the base game published, however, I don't want to give it away for precisely the same reason.  The time I will have to dedicate to gaming is going to decrease as the months progress as well.  

Also, with all the positive playtesting feedback from Open Rails, I still had some things I wanted to do with it.  It's a game that takes anywhere from 2-4 hours to play depending on how deep the analysis goes.  It has a good number of bits.  It doesn't really scale all that well to solitaire play either.  

What to do?

I have decided to begin work on a print and play version of Open Rails for 1-3 players that will hopefully be ready by the time Christmas rolls around.  Like most of the projects I've worked on, the map will fit on one 8 x 10 sheet of paper and the tracking mat will fit on another 8 x 10 sheet.  The game will feature five public companies with five shares each.  Additional cards to track player actions and player order will be provided.  The number of cubes required to keep track of each company will be reduced from 25 to 16 or 17.

I decided to break out Inkscape and Google for information on the Washington/Baltimore area of the country and I ran across a few good web pages and maps from the 1850's.  I was able to whip up a map in Hexdraw after cropping what I wanted from the historical document that I found showing Maryland and Delaware's main railroads.  From there, it was a matter of taking elements from the Open Rails work I had done prior and doing a small bit of rework to get everything to fit.  

As for rules, I decided to stick with most of what I had for Open Rails already.  The only key change was dropping the number of turns from 8 to 6 and changing the number of trains and cubes based on a map that was a third of the size of what is found in my original game.  Three rungs were removed from each side of the stock chart which now runs from $0 to $40.  

The fun part was drafting up solitaire rules which are most similar to 1829 Mainline in terms of the availability of shares.  Basically, five shares are drawn and out of that pool, a company can be created.  At the end of each turn, one share is drawn and if that company has been formed, its stock value drops one rung.  Most other rules are the same and the key is to luck out and get all the shares possible while balancing payouts and dividend withholding.  The final jump in the stock ladder goes from $30 to $40 and for owning five stocks in a company is a $50 play.   

On three games, I tallied cash/stock totals of $298, $211 and $404.  I had different formations of companies and different strategies evolved.  Compared to other solitaire train games, this one has a fair amount of flexibility and the map potential on this particular game system could be quite intriguing.  The good thing was that each game took under 30 minutes to play (and usually closer to 20 minutes).  Almost too short, but it is a good introductory walk in the park to the game system and key elements of the 18XX system in general.

As for the map itself, I will have to experiment a little as it is more unbalanced than I would like.  The entire eastern side is underutilitized (which was historically accurate).  The PRR seems to be extremely strong with the B&O a good second.  The B&P and RF&P are hemmed in if there isn't enough starting capital.  For the solo game in general, very little track building takes place because it is extremely difficult to get enough shares together.  Train development on the single player map is pretty limited as well.  I imagine that the two player and three player will be much more cut throat than Open Rails which to me is a good thing.  If the play on the 2 and 3 player games tanks on the map, I will have to find another venue or draft special rules.  We'll see.

But it looks promising.  I will probably circulate files to my band of playtesters in the week and hope that it gets a few plays in before a release on BGG on Christmas.