Jesse.MarkowitzandClaude Opus 5
f308a2d94d
The four hand-written references brought up to the game as it actually runs, ahead of the next testing round, plus a Quickstart to hand a tester who has never played. They had not been touched since v0.6.2 — a month and two minor versions — and each now says at the top which build it describes. ONE LIVE BUG CAME OUT OF THE PASS. mainlineDescription told players "Cars may be sorted into any new order here" on the Interchange. It is the printed capability and has never been implemented: nothing reads sortsCars to permit a sort, and its one live use is marking the card an Extra may be made up on, because it is the Mainline card with a yard. That sentence is not only documentation — view.ts renders it as a Mainline card's `what`, so it is what a player reads on the board, and the generated reference printed a "Sorts cars: yes" column beside it. A card advertising a button that does not exist sends a player hunting for it and then concluding the game is broken. What the documents had wrong, all of it verified against the code rather than read for tone: the victory model in the Rules book (firstToTarget / highestAfterDays and the target-bearing length presets stopped existing in 2026-08 — it is a free days count and a combined floor of 3 x players x days); "there is no lobby, no server, no multiplayer"; crossing time in mph rather than regions; Extras launched automatically eastbound; the Uncontrolled Siding listed as a passing card; industry track length taken from the box count; and a "Sister Trains" optional rule that never existed. The Home deck's counts table came out under TODO #15a — Jesse's own ruling that counts move with balance — and it had been wrong for a month, which is the argument made twice. The Home and Mainline deck references are restructured to explain how a deck is USED and to defer every per-card table to rules/as-built.md. Duplicating it by hand is precisely the drift #15a was raised about: as-built needed no correction beyond the Interchange, because build:cards regenerates it and a test fails when the checked-in file disagrees. Everything hand-maintained around it had drifted; it had not. docs/design.md, the index everything starts from, said v0.4.3, "what is not: the server", and 493 tests. It now also lists the player-facing references, which it never has, so the Quickstart is findable at all. 999 fast tests and 35 sim tests pass. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DmdqqCNoiqE7GBo6wthBnR
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Station Master — Mainline Deck
Describes the game as built at v0.8.0.15 (2026-09-20). Previously stamped "v0.4.5", the
prototype rules edition these references were first written against; the filename keeps that stamp
because src/, CHANGELOG.md and docs/rules/ all cite this file by name.
Scope: the tarot-sized Mainline cards placed between Offices — how the deck is dealt, what a card does to a train crossing it, and the Home Deck cards played onto one.
Per-card numbers live in
rules/as-built.md, which is GENERATED fromsrc/engine/content.tsand checked bytest/card-reference.test.ts, so it cannot disagree with the game. This document explains how the deck is used; that one is the table of record. Where the two ever differ, as-built is right.
How Mainline cards work
At setup the game lays one Mainline card between each neighbouring pair of Offices and one beyond
each end Office, between it and a Division Point — so a game with N players uses N + 1 cards.
They are dealt from a finite deck without replacement (since v0.6.2), so no Division can hold
two of a card printed once. The two Division Points are the fixed ends of the Division and are not
in the deck: buildDivision lays them itself.
A card does not belong to either neighbouring Office. It is shared Division.
Crossing time is REGIONS, not mph
A card is divided into regions, and a train advances one region per Stage. Crossing time is
therefore regions − startRegion, and nothing else. The printed mph is scenery.
This is the part most likely to be remembered wrong, because it used to work the other way: mph set the cost and a Slow train added a Stage to every card. It does not. Four things move a train's start region and nothing else does:
- The card's own back region. The Uncontrolled Siding and the Interchange print a back region that is not part of the road, so a train running through begins past it.
- A card that prints a Fast and a Slow start — and only Hilly does. A fast train starts one region along and crosses in 1 Stage; a slow one takes 2. No other card reads a train's Fast/Slow rating at all.
- The permanent Heavy Grade modifiers, each moving a train one region up the hill.
- Occupancy: arriving to find the card occupied can put a train in the siding, a region behind.
No crossing ever takes less than one Stage.
Traffic
Only Double Track lets two trains stand on one card, so a following train is not held behind a slower one. Every other card holds one train at a time. The Uncontrolled Siding is not a passing card: arriving to find a train already there puts you in the siding a region behind it — you do not run into it, and it costs you the extra Stage instead.
Whether a following train may enter an occupied card at all is the Superintendent's ruling (§8.1, Rules §4.5). Getting it wrong is what causes collisions.
The deck
Ten drawable cards — Plains twice, the other eight once each — plus the two Division Point cards, which are not drawn.
| Card | Copies |
|---|---|
| Plains | 2 |
| Curves | 1 |
| Hilly | 1 |
| Heavy Grade | 1 |
| Double Track | 1 |
| Uncontrolled Siding | 1 |
| Tunnel | 1 |
| Trestle | 1 |
| Interchange | 1 |
| East / West Division Point | 1 each, not dealt |
The PDF art labels the Interchange "Yard". This reference uses Interchange throughout, to keep it apart from the Division Yard, the Classification Yard, the Yard Office and the Small Yard — five different things.
Region counts and entry points per card are in rules/as-built.md.
The Interchange, and what it does NOT do
The Interchange prints a car-sorting capability. It is not implemented, and never has been. The
one thing the card's sortsCars flag actually gates is that an Extra Train may be made up and
started here — it is the Mainline card with a yard, which is why §7 allows it (v0.6.2). An Extra
starting here begins in the back region and takes the extra Stage.
Re-ordering a consist is done at a Small Yard in an Office Area, for one switching Move. See Rules §4.3.
Corrected 2026-09-20. Until this pass the card said "Cars may be sorted into any new order here" — on the board, in the tooltip a player reads, and in the generated reference. A card advertising an action the game will not offer sends a player hunting for a button that does not exist. The description now says what the card does.
Heavy Grade modifiers
Home Office cards, played onto a Mainline card during a player's Draw option.
| Card | Placement and effect |
|---|---|
| Brakeman | Heavy Grade only. A downhill train starts one region further on. |
| Airbrakes | Heavy Grade only, and Brakeman must already be on that card. A downhill train starts one region further again. |
| Helpers | Heavy Grade only. An uphill train starts one region further on. |
| Realignment | Only onto an unoccupied Mainline card. Plains → Double Track, Curves → Plains, Uncontrolled Siding → Double Track, Trestle → Uncontrolled Siding. No other card may be realigned. |
A Heavy Grade is 3 regions, so it is 3 Stages to climb and 3 to run down before help. Modifiers never reduce a crossing below one Stage.
Heavy Grade orientation is settled, not missing
Heavy Grade orientation is rolled from the seed, not chosen by a player. This is a decision, not a gap.
The card prints "(Up)" and "Player sets orientation", which assumes the card has an owner. This one
does not: the Division is laid DP · Mainline · Office · Mainline · … · DP, so a Heavy Grade always
sits between two districts, or beyond an end Division Point beside one — never inside a single
player's district.
Orientation is not cosmetic. Brakeman and Airbrakes help a train running downhill, Helpers helps one running uphill, and odd-numbered trains run west while even run east. Turning the card around decides which modifiers are worth anything and which direction of traffic is favoured, for the whole game. Handing that to one of two neighbours advantages them over the other, and neither has a fair claim to it.
Re-opened and closed again on 2026-08-23, when giving the choice to the Superintendent was considered and rejected. Jesse's call: v0.5.0's ruling stands. Rolling from the seed is deterministic, roughly even (51/49 east/west over 400 games), identical in solitaire and multiplayer, and keeps setup non-interactive — the game has no setup phase, so the question would have to interrupt play before the first Local Operations, in the minority of games that deal the card at all (20% at one player, rising to 50% at four).