The Big Four?

Perhaps the most significant change in the history of British railways was the grouping of 1921-3, in which the existing railways were forced to amalgamate into the Big Four (LNER, LMS, GWR and Southern Railways). I had been planning to end Britain Under Steam before this point, but now that I'm adding rules for mergers, I can revisit that choice.

I'm thinking of requiring that in the final phase of the game, each player may only own a single company. The idea is that they would merge their other companies into that company (or let them wither completely). I would add a special merger round in which every company would get the chance to merge, followed by a stock round in which each player must end with only one directorship.

To this, I could add grey tiles with only a single station circle. So if a company can promote a city to a grey tile, it would gain exclusive control of that city. I'm undecided as to whether it could forcibly remove other company's markers or whether this upgrade would only be permitted if a company has the only marker in the city. This would need playtesting, of course.

I'm also unsure whether the final mergers should be initiated by the parent company or by the merging company. In my current rules for mergers, I've required both directors to agree to the merger. (Usually the two directorships will be help by the same player). But in the final merger, you could have each company choose which other company to merge into, so that all companies are included in the merger. The main point of interest is what would happen to the share price. You could see a player deliberately running down one of their lesser companies and merging it into another player's company, to drag back their opponent's share price. It's an intriguing idea.