Scotland under Steam?

In my reading about the history of railways in Great Britain, I’ve taken a particular interest in Scotland. This is partly because I’ve lived in Edinburgh for most of the last 25 years, and partly because it is one area where the design of 1825 takes major comprises with history in order to make a playable game. I’ve already made an 1825 variant for the Scottish board and recently I had some interesting e-mail discussions with Stuart Dagger on the subject. Then Geoff C designed an 1825 extension board for the north of Scotland and uploaded it to the 18xx yahoo group. So clearly there is some interest here.

From what I’ve read, it looks like Scotland should make a good 18xx game. Although two companies came to dominate the country, several reasonably-sized companies were formed along the way:

• Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway: 1838-1865
• Glasgow and South Western Railway: 1838 onwards (starting as the Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr Railway)
• North-British Railway: 1844 onwards (originally running from Edinburgh to Berwick)
• Caledonian Railway: 1844 onwards (running from Glasgow to Carlisle), or possibly 1838 onwards, starting as the Glasgow, Paisley & Greenock Railway.
• Scottish Central Railway: 1845-1865
• Scottish North Eastern Railway: 1845-1866 (The 1845 dates refers to the formation of two constituent companies, the Scottish Midland Junction Railway and the Aberdeen Railway)
• Great North of Scotland Railway: 1846 onwards
• Highland Railway: 1854 onwards, starting as the Inverness and Nairn Railway.

Company mergers, such as the Edinburgh and Glasgow merging into the North British, or the Caledonian absorbing the Scottish Central and Scottish North Eastern, could either be represented as an explicit merger as in 1861 or 1812, or could simply be modelled as the same player running the two companies to mutual advantage.