Buying trains

I reckon that newcomers to 18xx find it odd that companies buy trains at the end of their turn, rather than the beginning. In particular, this means that on their first turn, companies can't run a train for income. Now, this may be historically apt, as it is certainly the case that companies have to build track before they can run any trains, but as a game it seems odd.

There are, of course, many reasons why the games are designed this way. For one thing, if a company could buy a train from another company that has just used it, the same train could be run several times during the same operating round (by different companies each time). You would need some sort of mechanism to prevent this. For another thing, a company that just had all its trains scrapped at the beginning of a phase could just buy a new train and run that, instead of losing income and share price from having no trains for a round. This would be especially true is credit is easy to come by, in the form of loans or issuing further shares.

I think I've come up with a mechanism that may square this circle. That is to let companies buy a train when they are floated, as part of the actions taken during company formation. In fact, the rules could even require a company to purchase a train at this point. This would have a couple of effects. First, it may restrict the valid share price for starting the company (at least later in the game) - as is the case with 1825's minor companies. Second, it may dampen the effect of asset stripping, in that not all the company cash will be available to transfer to other companies. (Of course, other companies could just buy the new train, so the dampening is only mild).

I'll give this a try and see how well it works in practice.