When Trains Rust

My aim for Britain Under Steam is to have companies rising and falling in value, so that players are selling some shares and buying others throughout the game, trying to spot which shares will return most value. The key 18xx mechanism to trigger changes in value is the obsolescence of trains as newer ones replace them. So the question that arises is, what should happen when a company loses all its trains and doesn't have enough funds to buy a new one? I'll borrow a term from 1860 and call such companies "insolvent".

In 1830 and its derivatives, the director of an insolvent company must provide funds from his own hand. If he can't, he is bankrupted. That's not the kind of game I'm looking to design. In any case, one feature of the British railway boom was the innovation of limited liability companies, in which the directors did not have to personally bankroll their corporations.

Some other 18xx games allow insolvent companies to take loans to fund the purchase of new trains. They may then have to pay interest on these loans, be required to repay loans before making further purchases, and/or suffer a reduced share price. This is more in line with my goal, provided that the penalty for loans does noticeably affect the value of the company. 1861, for example, is probably too lenient for my aims; in that game a company's share price is unaffected by loans taken.

The original 18xx game, 1829, and descendants such as 1825 and 1860, allow insolvent companies without directors to borrow a notional train from the bank. A company can collect income from running this borrowed train until it has enough to buy a train of its own. As it is not paying dividends, its share price drops each turn that it remains insolvent. This "train borrowing" mechanism seems a little clunky but it does work.

Perhaps an alternative is to combine the most appropriate aspects of the two approaches, as follows. An insolvent company must take loans to buy a train. A company with loans may not pay dividends, but must withhold income. Hence an insolvent company will drop in share value until it has paid for its trains, just as if we were using the "borrowing" approach.

Into this mix there is also the option for a 5-share company to convert to a 10-share company, gaining the capital to buy a train in the process. I hope that this will be a worthwhile option, so that I don't have to bring in a rule that forces an insolvent company to convert. So directors will have the choice of converting, taking loans, or selling the company altogether.