On Trains and Towns

For a while, I struggled to find a good way of dealing with the towns that 18xx games represent as small stations, those in which companies cannot place markers. At the start of the game, I wanted 2 trains to run through them (either skipping them as in 1861 or scoring their income as in 18EU). Soon after, I wanted them to block 2 and 3 trains from connecting stations that I deem to be "too far" apart for small trains - such as London to Manchester. Later on, I wanted 5 or 6 trains to be able to run through them. This was, of course, contradictory.

I came up with two solutions, which led to a short discussion on the 18xx list. The first was to limit the number of hexes that trains could run in addition to the number of towns & cities they can call at. So 2 trains would be limited to 5 hexes, 3 trains to 7 hexes, 5 trains to 11 hexes, and so on. You could call these 2/5H, 3/7H, ... trains. (I don't want to just use hex trains because other parts of the map have plenty of cities in close proximity and hex trains would make fortunes).

The second solution was to use + trains, e.g. 2+1 trains that can call at 2 cities and 1 town, 3+1 trains that can call at 3 cities and 1 town (or 2 cities and 2 towns), and so on.

The clear preference from the 18xx list was for the + trains, which agreed with my own intuition. Another suggestion was to use "N of M" trains, which can call at M stations but only count income from N of them (allowing them to skip low value stations). I think the + trains fit my game better, because I don't want trains to skip low value large stations.

Like many solutions, this one looks obvious in retrospect. It took several weeks of pondering and I only stumbled upon the answer when setting up a game of 1812, which uses them.